86 SA Flyer Magazine
Chris Martinus compares
the threat to general
aviation of corporate
interests and corruption
to Hitler’s siege of Soviet
Leningrad during WWII,
and questions whether the
industry has what it takes
to persevere.
T
HE siege of Leningrad
during World War II
was the longest and
most destructive siege
in history – and the
costliest in terms of
casualties.
As part of Hitler’s
ambitions to acquire Eastern Europe and
Russia as Lebensraum (‘living space’) for
his Germanic ‘master race’, his intention
was to destroy the strategic city of
Leningrad, together with its population of
3.3 million.
What followed was a siege by the Axis
forces for 872 days, during which 1,500,000
soldiers and civilians died and another
1,400,000, mostly women and children,
were evacuated, many to nevertheless die
from starvation and bombardment. The
city was encircled by German forces to the
south and Finland’s army to the north.
The aerial bombing raids and long-
range artillery strikes were terrible
enough, but the most macabre horrors
were from extreme mass starvation. Not
only did people die on the streets, but
the Soviet secret police later arrested
some 2,105 people for cannibalism. The
NKVD even made a grisly legal distinction
between trupoyedstvo (corpse-eating) and
lyudoyedstvo (person-eating).
SOUTH AFRICA
South Africans are no strangers to the
concept of siege, bombardment, starvation
and scorched earth policies, having been
subjected to the depredations of the British
colonial forces some 40 years earlier than
Leningrad, albeit on a smaller scale.
There were, however, signicant
differences between Leningrad and the
Anglo-Boer War in South Africa. Hitler,
in several of his speeches, vowed that
“Leningrad must be erased from the face of
the earth.” On the other hand, Lord Roberts
offered the Boers the option of capitulation
in proclamations such as these:
“The ght is against the Boer
government – Boers staying peacefully at
home will not be molested.”
“Burghers who lay down their arms and
take an oath to abstain from further part in
the war will be given safe conduct to their
homes and will not be made prisoners-of-
war or deprived of their property.”
Many Boers took up the offer, but were
labelled as ‘hensoppers’ or ‘hands-uppers’
by those who wanted to pursue the war
further against the colonial invaders. Some
Boers joined the British and fought on
their side. Many were shot by their own as
traitors.
The value of the study of history is
that it not only reminds us of the dreadful
inhumanities of the past and hopefully
discourages us from repeating those
events, but also furnishes us with a
framework for evaluating the present and
dealing with the future.
What’s this got to do with ying? Well,
general aviation is also under siege.
THE SIEGE OF GENERAL AVIATION
The term ‘general aviation’ (GA)
encompasses all aviation that falls outside
the scope of commercial operations, where
passengers or cargo are carried for reward,
or ‘aerial work’ operations, which include
aerial photography, agricultural or survey
work.
GA encompasses a broad range of
activities, from recreational ying in very
light aircraft to corporate operations in
big jets. The core of GA is the use of
smaller aircraft for personal or business
transportation, much as people use cars.
GA has been around since the dawn of
aviation and hit its peak in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, when the traditional
manufacturers such as Cessna, Piper and
Beechcraft saw their highest sales. Since
then, GA worldwide has been in decline
AOPA BRIEFING
Chris Martinus ‒ Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association – South Africa
THE SIEGE OF
GENERAL AVIATION
Taken during the siege of Leningrad.
Is GA under siege from regulations
driven by corporate interests?
87 SA Flyer Magazine
where the deliveries of piston aircraft have
all but at-lined at fewer than 500 aircraft
delivered annually. Business jets and
turboprops aimed at the corporate market
also total fewer than 500 delivered each
year. The sales by individual manufacturers
is dismal and leads one to wonder if such
manufacturing operations are sustainable
for much longer.
The last decade has seen considerable
and encouraging growth of experimental
or non type-certied aircraft (NTCA), but
even this sector is stalling. NTCA largely
dominate the recreational sector of aviation
and, despite some considerable efforts to
attract the conventional buyer who seeks
safe and reliable transportation from a
long-standing manufacturer, this segment
has gained little traction in the face of a still
plentiful supply of ageing certied aircraft.
Used aircraft have declined in real value
and this has kept them as an attractive
alternative to a more expensive new
uncertied machine.
IDENTIFYING THE ENEMY
The commonly identied villain is
worldwide poor economic circumstances,
but although this is a factor, it should be
borne in mind that aviation has survived
and even grown through several previous
recessions.
A more signicant factor is that GA
aircraft themselves have not developed to
cater for today’s market. In an era where
everything is easy, where gratication is
immediate, where electronics seamlessly
manages our lives, our communications,
our entertainment, our shopping and our
transportation, a brand new aircraft remains
anchored in the distant past.
Other than supercial changes in
materials and instrument panels, GA
aircraft remain difcult to learn to y, and
hazardous if not handled with care and
discipline.
While the challenge of learning the
skills and knowledge required to just
survive a takeoff and landing may be
appealing to the few remaining keen stick-
and-rudder pilots, it holds about the same
excitement value for much of the current
generation as making your own shoes or
sewing your own clothes. Why bother with
all that trouble when anything else can be
achieved with a few taps on the screen of
your smartphone?
Today’s market expects an aircraft
that requires little or no training to operate,
where the pilot taps the screen to choose
his destination and the aircraft systems
deal with all the tasks of ight, navigation
and trafc avoidance. The technologies to
mass-produce such aircraft have existed
for some time, but it just hasn’t happened.
Unmanned drones, on the other hand, are
advancing in leaps and bounds.
This begs the question of why our
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88 SA Flyer Magazine
aircraft are still so primitive. These days,
we even start our cars simply by pushing
a button instead of having to deal with the
complication of turning a key to crank the
engine and having to release it at the right
moment. Yet many new aircraft still have
mysteriously archaic things like a mixture
control sticking out of the panel.
Well, the fundamental reason why our
aircraft have not moved into the future
is because of excessively restrictive
regulations. It is the regulatory environment
that is behind the anomaly that a design
that is over 60 years old, the ubiquitous
Cessna 172, is still a top seller today. Sure,
Cessna don’t sell many of them, but other
manufacturers like Cirrus with their ‘modern’
parachutes and composite construction are
not doing a whole lot better.
If we still wonder why our youngsters
are less than thrilled about paying millions
for a Cessna 172, we should take note that
they are not buying sixty-year-old ‘nommer
asseblief’ telephones or driving 1956
DeSotos either.
It costs millions of dollars to obtain
certication for a new aircraft design.
Considering the minuscule volumes of
aircraft that are being produced and sold, it
is little wonder that we see no new designs.
The regulatory problem is self-perpetuating.
NTCA are doing no better. NTCA are
now more heavily regulated than certied
aircraft.
So, where do all these regulations
come from? Our Civil Aviation Authority
(CAA) points at ICAO and tells us that it is
they who want us to have the dozens and
dozens of new regulations that are ladled
upon us every month. It is for “safety” that
we have so many regulations and more in
the pipeline, they say.
“Representative” organisations smile
and tell us that this is the “self-regulation”
that we desire for NTCA. This benets us
and we should be very grateful for “our”
regulations.
But something does not gel here. ICAO
is simply a club of nations that get together
to make regulatory standards. So when
regulators point at ICAO, they are in fact
pointing at themselves.
And why on earth would we want
to have all these regulations for NTCA
that have turned them into some new
kind of type-certied aircraft? Wasn’t
NTCA supposed to be a category where
homebuilders and enthusiasts who are
willing to take the risks can build and y
their own aircraft?
The reasons that we are given for the
excessive regulation of GA are patently
false. The regulatory process is not driven
by safety any more – it is driven by business
interests and money.
The regulators and legislators of every
country in the world are under continual
immense pressure from businesses to
make regulations that give them leverage
over their customers and their competitors.
There is nothing illegal about this. It is
called lobbying in the USA. 16th Century
economist Adam Smith called it rent-
seeking, because businesses earn income
or ‘rent’ without having provided any value.
Public Protector Thuli Madonsela called
it state capture when government organs
are manipulated by individuals and rms to
inuence state policies in their favour.
When public ofcials grant regulatory
or other favours in return for money or other
benets, it becomes corruption. We live in
a constitutional democracy. In a democratic
state, there is always an adversarial
system of checks and balances, state and
opposition. Our current form of capitalism
has no concept of right and wrong. It only
recognises what is protable and what you
can get away with. When you have the
people’s representatives, the government,
the military and the police on your payroll,
you can get away with anything.
Philosopher Joseph le Maistre said
that every nation gets the government it
deserves. It follows that people must hold
their leaders, representatives and
government accountable to them, rather
than allowing them to run amok in order to
line their own pockets at the expense of the
very people they are obliged to protect.
LIFTING THE SIEGE
GA, like the people of Leningrad who
were caught between the Finns to the
north and the Germans to the south, is
caught between the business interests of
commercial aviation on one side and the
business interests of so-called recreational
aviation on the other side.
Commercial aviation companies are
attempting to capture corporate aviation
through regulations that pay bogus lip-
service to safety standards. Recreational
aviation has been captured through
a system of regulatory favours, front
companies and the straight payment of
money. But they are starving due to poor
economic circumstances and, like the
denizens of Leningrad, they are eating not
just the corpses but are eating the living as
well.
Do we ght our way out of the siege like
the Red Army in Leningrad, or do we take
the path of appeasement taken by the Boer
hensoppers?
AOPA BRIEFING
j
Today’s market expects an aircraft that requires
little or no training to operate, where the pilot
taps the screen to choose the destination.
