Pilots might ban Dunedin’s airport

Press, 21 July 1980, Page 4

Pilots might ban Dunedin’s airport

PA Dunedin If members of the Airline Pilots’ Association do not have the assurances they seek on the surveillance radar at Dunedin’s airport by late tomorrow, they will no! fly to the airport when it reopens on Wednesday. The president of the Pilots’ Association (Captain D. G. McAlister) said last evening that it was up to the Government or the Civil Aviation

Division of the Ministry of Transport to make a move on the matter. . If they do not “we will be slap into a confrontation on Wednesday.” he said. The pilots seek an assurance, in writing, that the flooded radar will be repaired or replaced. They are prepared to land at Dunedin’s airport without the radar, provided they have this guarantee first. Captain McAlister said the division told the association last week that it was not prepared to abandon the principle of surveillance radar equipment in Dunedin at this stage. “We want a direct, positive statement. Is it going to be repaired or replaced?” Captain McAlister said the Pilots’ Association had geared itself towards a strike. If any airline sacked a pilot for not flying to Dunedin. “the whole country is going to be closed.” He indicated, however, that he did not expect the matter to come to this. Captain McAlister said there seemed to be a feeling that the radar was a Dqnedin radar, when in fact it covered the area from Oamaru south. It had been suggested that because Hamilton did not have this type of radar, neither should Dunedin. But Hamilton was catered for by the Auckland radar which covered the area north of Auckland to Mount Ruapehu. Then the Ohakea radar covered from Mount Ruapehu down to 70km south of Palmerston North; Wellington radar covered from'

there to an area south ef Nelson Christchurch covered from there to Osmaru; and Dunedin covered further south. f “We are not talking about an airport radar system, but an area radar system,” Captain McAlister said. He acknowledged that, some might consider the pilots were being slightly inconsistent in refusing td use Dunedin’s airport when thev were prepared to land at Oamaru and Invercargill. Asked whether the association would refuse to use Oamaru Airport if airlines decided to use it until the issue was resolved, Captain McAlister said no decision had been made. Last week, the Acting Director of Civil Aviation, (Mr T. R. Pike), said the future of the radar was being considered by the division’s radar policy review committee. As the policy was not yet determined, the division could not give the guarantee sought by tha pilots, he said. The pilots have been invited to make submissions to the committee. Repairing or replacing the radar if proposed, would cost $1 million to $1.5 million and the division had to investigate fully so that it could advise the Government that such expense was justitled, Mr Pike said. The committee will' not present its report until the end of October. * , ’ Air New Zealand hopes on Wednesday to begin some Friendship flights to Dunediii again.