Australian Air Safari ??

"
Unfortunately this company (GOANA Safari) did stop operating at the end
of 2005 due to new security regulations in Australia that made it


Damn a day late and a dollar short.

Thanks for the info.

Paul
N1431A

"Tri-Pacer" wrote in message
. ..
Has anyone any knowledge of an "Australian Air Safari" where pilots and
their families rent light aircraft and go on a guided tour around the
country?

As I understand it, several planes are led from place to place by a local
guide.

I had heard about this several years ago. Supposedly, the company arranges
for checkout and local certification, arranges the tour, etc.

Any info would be appreciated. Google turned up lots of charter
operations,
but no self piloted tours.

I mentioned this to my wife and she said "Let's go!!!"

Paul

Stawell Aviation Services is advertising 2006 outback airtours with dates of
May through to September. There is a big write up (9 pages ) about one of
their outback Safaris in the Nov/Dec 05 Australian flying magazine. Happy
to fax you a copy if you want to email me your fax number. Or you might
want to give them a call , their phone number is
61 3 5358 3822 and Graham Boatman is the owner and he has been doing these
tours apparently for 20 years. ( the 61 is the australian code) .
Stawell is a small town in the West of the state of Victoria. They take a
fleet of their own aircraft and also allow others to bring along their own
aircraft. I am not sure about the security issues, there is a big backlog
of Australian pilots waiting to get their new security cards.
Terry
PPL downunder

That would be optimistic. Australian GA pilots have been waiting almost a
year for the new Aviation ID cards (which are useless, because you actually
need an ASIC Aviation Security Identification Card). The regulatory
authority has a backlog of 23000 and some think the wait will be 12 months.
If you haven't applied for one by 31 Dec 06 then landing at any airport with
regular public transport (just about every airport in Australia) then you
can get busted with a $2,200 fine for each infringement.

If the toursists go to the back of the queue then you better have a year or
so to drive around the country before contemplating flying yourself
anywhere. It is bureacracy gone totally insane handled in a totally inept
way that is killing an already suffering GA community. See posts on
Rec.Aus.Aviation...

And yes AAS has closed its doors to the best of my knowledge. There was a
press release towards the end of last year announcing same citing the
bureacracy/secuirty issues as the prime cause.

Cheers,
Kevin

"Ron Natalie" wrote in message
m...
Eric Bartsch wrote:
Unfortunately this company (GOANA Safari) did stop operating at the end
of 2005 due to new security regulations in Australia that made it
difficult for foreign pilots to get checked out in their planes. I had
always hoped to do this someday, but looks like I missed my chance.
They used to have a booth at Oshkosh with all of the information.

It's not the checkout. I got checked out under the new rules (I
essentially had to do a full up BFR, just added an additional day).

What killed them is that to go into any airport with scheduled
air service (and we're talking about nowhere airports without
even a fence around them) you need a security card. The Australian
bureaucracy won't even start processing cards for foreigners until
you get to Australia which means you'd have to allocate a couple
of extra weeks in front of the tour to push papers.