Page 51 - Defence Industry Guide #56 2022

ADM’s Defence Industry Guide 2022 | Edition 56 | www.defencesuppliers.com.au
PLAN CORELLA 51
LEFT: An AW139 flown by pilots from the 5th Aviation Regiment at Lavarack Barracks, Townsville in September 2021
ABOVE: Army aircrew from the 5th Aviation Regiment prepare one of the AW139s at RAAF Base Amberley as part of Operation Flood Assist 2022
a similar manner to their counterparts, initially deploying to Oakey and later to Enoggera Barracks in Brisbane.
“They are providing real effect to the Lismore and Ballina area and to south east Queensland. There are a lot of veterans in Toll that have served in Army Aviation and we can relate closely to what the guys need. It’s been really great to integrate as a team, you can’t see where Toll ends and Army starts, we’re operating hand in glove with them,” Walker explained.
“The other benefit of having AICH available is it frees up a ‘green’ helicopter to go out and do the heavier lifting of flood support. The AW139 is perfectly suited to the command and liaison task of moving people around as the operation goes on.”
OTHER CONTRACTS AND TRAINING
Toll Helicopters operates a fleet of eight AW139s on behalf of the NSW and ACT Ambulance Services and also holds a con- tract to provide a pair of Bell 412 to the Army Aviation Training Centre at Oakey, primarily for Search and Rescue coverage.
Like the AW139s, the Bells are on contract until June 2023 with the option of two one-year extensions and beyond that, the ADF is looking to streamline its civil-contracted SAR operations around the country and this may provide future opportunities to expand the AW139 fleet.
Toll also maintains a state-of-the-art training centre at Bankstown, which includes an AW139 Full Flight Simulator (FFS) – the only OEM-endorsed FFS of its kind in Austra- lia – and a Helicopter Underwater Escape Trainer (HUET).
The Plan Corella contract was signed on a Friday and the first course of pilots and aircrew arrived at the ACE Train- ing Centre on the following Monday to begin a two-week AW139 type rating course ground school period, followed by two weeks of simulator flight training and then a two- week Operational Type Transition (OTT) course on the real helicopter in Townsville.
FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES
In addition to the aforementioned ADF SAR helicopter con- tract and the possibility of the third AW139 option being
taken up, Defence has flagged the possibility of harnessing the potential of the ex-Army and Navy helicopter crews now working in the civil sector.
“The key impediment to achieving a genuine Army Reserve aviation flying capability has been the risks as- sociated with aircrew operating two highly complex heli- copter types and the potential for negative habit transfer, and also operating under two different airworthiness and regulatory regimes,” Gunn explained. “However with the AW139 proving its non-combat, multi-role effectiveness over the last 12 months, and Army’s AICH crews being trained to, licenced under and operating predominantly to a civil rule set, this constraint is fading.”
In his From The Source interview in ADM’s June 2021 issue, Head Land Capability Major General Simon Stu- art said that Plan Corella is a “neat way” of addressing a range of current and emerging requirements. “We are, through our Future-Ready Workforce efforts, taking a re- ally close look at what we call the Total Workforce model. That’s better use of the combination of full- and part-time soldiers,” MAJGEN Stuart said. “We know that ex-Army aviators work in industry and generally fly certain types of civil helicopters.
“So, the question is, how can we make the best use of that latent capacity to generate more effort, particularly for do- mestic tasks? To have a similar – or the same – aircraft for those people to fly when they put their uniform on makes a lot of sense to generate additional capacity.” ■
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