In continuation of the keynote speech, Mr Henderson asked the questions: What are the strategic goals of IGC? How do we see gliding as a sport in the future?
The president listed all the issues that IGC possibly could deal with, and asked what the role of IGC should be in the future. Should IGC start to work more on the legislative side of gliding such as airspace, licensing, airworthiness?
A long debate followed this introduction.
Mr. Hansen was of the opinion that EGU should take care of this. IGC should concentrate on sporting matters.
Mr Axel Reich believed that IGC has a role to play with regard to licenses.
Mr Ian Strachan stated that sport alone is not enough.
Mr Alvaro de Orleans Borbon, FAI vice president, mentioned as an example that the Zurich TMA grows due to lack of resistance from our side, problems like that could be solved by lobbying.
Mr Terry Cubley, Australia, went back to the membership challenge saying that it is more a problem of keeping members than recruiting new.
This was supported by Mr. Hansen.
Mr Dick Bradley, South Africa, said that efficiency of the gliding system was required. We need to professionalise gliding, at least partly. How can we formalise that?
Mr Bishop: You are FAI! Don’t say "they". There is a trend towards more power to the air sports in FAI, you as a Sporting Commission will get more influence. We are certainly not good enough at getting people enrolled when they visit our airfields.
Mr Patrick Pauwels, Belgian delegate: It is more and more difficult to get volunteers to run our sport.
Mr Eric Mozer, USA delegate: We have seen similar problems in the United States. I am not sure if IGC should dig into the technical issues. Max is right when he says that we are not good in capturing new members. At Club level, we seem to not be interested in this.
Mr. Eriksen: If EGU are looking after licenses, airworthiness and airspace in Europe, OSTIV looks at training, safety and design, and IGC deals with competitions and records only, who deals with the future of gliding then? The role of gliding in the future society, membership, quality etc.? Let’s set ourselves some goals.
Mr Spreckley: A change is necessary if we want to survive and IGC can create the climate where this can take place.
Mr. Hannes Linke: The fact that we could continue in the USA after 9/11 was because we had good lines of communication to the government. We must assure this continues in the future.
Mr Hansen: Peter (Eriksen) is right, we must set goals. We have two important things to do, set goals to have more members, and accept commercial activities.
Mr. Aldo Cernauta: From Italy’s side we are ready to support airspace lobbying with funding.
Mr Bruno Ramseyer, Ireland: This (regulatory matters) is the job of the national associations, not IGC.
Mr Ian Strachan: The mere size of some of our operations requires commercial support, we cannot continue as pure amateurs.
Mr. Henderson summarised the discussion by stating: I am strongly encouraged by the fact that you did not start discussing the rules, but remained with the subject, IGC’s future role. We need to work with other air sports, publish best practises, and develop an IGC vision and long-term strategies.