Keynote Speech by Wolfgang Weinreich (IGC Plenary, Lausanne, 4.3.2005)

Mr. President,

Dear IGC delegates,

Dear friends of the gliding family!

When your president, Bob Henderson, asked me some weeks ago if I would be ready for some keynote words at the IGC plenary meeting I felt very honoured indeed. Certainly it is with great pleasure for me to address you and I feel very privileged to speak to you. During my time as FAI president, also as president of Europe Air Sports and as president of the German Aeroclub before, I had the opportunity to gather much information about air sports in general and about our sport gliding in detail.

Now, after completion of all my mentioned mandates, I speak to you as a grass root glider pilot. This sport, in which my whole family is engaged, is a substantial part of my personal living quality. I think this refers to all of us. And so you will understand that I have a very strong interest that this sport can not only survive but also extend and develop positively in the future. You, dear delegates, you are the highest authority in this sport and the responsibility, to do everything possible (and even impossible) to safeguard the future of our sport, is on your shoulders.

I identified four topics, which I want to address now. None of them is a standalone issue as they are all interlinked. But please, do not take me wrong. It is not my intention to raise my voice and forecast a dramatic future like Cassandra in the ancient Greek mythology did, I will try to analyse some future hazards threatening our sport and I also hope to find at least a few answers or proposals.

These topics are:

• The sport, its rules and its attractiveness.
• The gliding community, a shrinking and aging family?
• The burden of regulations, administration and cost explosion.
• Airspace: Will we be limited to a number of reservoirs, like game reserves for endangered species?

My first topic: The sport, its rules and its attractiveness

The responsibility for the sport and its rules stays still exclusively with this body, the IGC. There is – luckily – no other organization, unlike some other air sports, that competes with IGC. Also the FAI, our umbrella organization for all the air sports, is not interfering when IGC is setting the rules for gliding in the sporting code. In this regard IGC has full autonomy.

During the years you have accomplished a complete set of “failsafe anti cheat” regulations and rules. Based on these rules all our competitions, records and even badges are flown. Unfortunately these rules are sometimes too complicated to be understood by the users and certainly too complicated to be understood by the public. In addition too many changes and amendments occur too often. I think that, at least, those who are interested in our sport should be able to follow what is going on in a championship or any other competition. On the other hand I want to emphasize that some quite positive developments in competition flying were definitely achieved by setting new formats of tasks, for instance the assigned area tasks. This has to be seen also in the light of an improved safety. I know that it is very difficult to find a proper wording that fits all required criteria.

But must a rule sound like this? Let me just give you one example taken from Annex A to Sporting Code Section 3, the definition of turn points and assigned areas. In 7.5.2 we read:

An Assigned Area shall be formed by:

b. Two radials originating at the competition site, or any other designated point, intersecting with arcs located between a minimum and / or maximum distance from the site or from the designated point, with the central GNSS position lying on the bisector of the radials halfway between the minimum and maximum defined distances.

My plea, please try to keep these rules as simple and understandable as possible!

Can you imagine what a journalist of the local press, who intends to report about yesterdays championship and the days discipline, an assigned area task, will write after receiving this quotation as an answer to his question "what does assigned area task mean?"

Be assured, he will write nonsense and he will never ask you again.

Nevertheless, I think we have to stick to strict rules for championships thus avoiding endless internal discussions and protests. Discussing this matter we should also differentiate between internal and external publications and PR. Internally the sport is attractive by itself for many of us due to several reasons. We might know some of the active competition pilots personally, or we have our personal heroes, sometimes we know the region where the competitions are held and also we have a comparison of the performance achieved in competitions or record flights compared to our own personal, individual performance.

In addition for the internal PR a big step forward has been achieved by the OLC, the online contest. Using the possibilities of modern techniques we can obtain an almost instant information about where and what is happening in the world of x-country gliding and even worldwide receive the data where and how the flights have been performed.

I really would like to congratulate the initiator of the OLC program, Reiner Rose, who is among us today, for this great contribution to our sport. However I would also like to express one concern I have in this regard. We should be very careful not to create a different set of rules, standards and judgement of a flights performance and thus drift away from the FAI sporting code.

So for a few thoughts and my internal view about our existing system of competition flying. As seen from the publics and from many media representatives standpoint of view – sorry to say - this format of competition sport is not very attractive and definitely not media friendly. That’s a fact. On the other side I have heard some of our, even high ranking, competition pilots saying: "We do not need the public, we will never be a Formula 1 attraction, forget all about public interest".

As I see it this is an attitude which is very shortsighted, dangerous and which we cannot afford. We need the public interest in our sport more than ever. Let me give you just one reason for my statement:

There are powerful political groups in our society heavily opposing any air sport for ideological reasons. We need to create a positive public view among the population of many countries by showing our peaceful and environment friendly sport in an understandable way, in order to argue against these politically motivated groups. We also must clearly point out the high educational value our sport has.

We must make our sport attractive, not only to watch it but also, especially for young people, to make it so attractive that they even want to participate. In order to achieve this goal we need to create, besides our championships, additional competition formats that are easy understood, that can be followed live using modern techniques and that give instant results when the first pilot crosses the finish line. I think Roland Stuck and Terry Cubley are on the right track with a very promising way to present our sport in a different, simple and easy understandable competition style, possibly called "Grand Prix" or "Cup".

I had the chance to watch the test run in St. Auban two years ago. My judgement is very positive, I am convinced that we should continue and develop this competition format for the future. And if FAI, what I really hope, will manage to have World Air Games No: 3 to become reality this format shall be used to show gliding to the interested public. We all should encourage Roland to engage himself in this field further on. I highly appreciate what Terry first demonstrated in 2001 in Australia and Roland has developed, many thanks to you both.

There is also another side aspect to the media attractiveness of our sport. We all suffer under the high costs. In the very moment when our sport is shown in an attractive and media friendly way we can expect financial support by sponsorship, but not before. We must also know that we have to deliver media friendly activities of high value for a sponsor in order to succeed.

One last word to this topic: We must find affordable ways to bring young people into competition flying. I am afraid our sport will loose its basis and will dry out from the roots if we will not manage to find solutions to reach this goal.

The gliding community: A shrinking and aging family?

At a first glance this title may sound provocative to you. Are we aging heroes? And if so, what is bad about it? How representative is this statement?

As far the "shrinking" is concerned I refer to the statistics from John Roake and from the gliding commission of the German Aeroclub. Both show an annual loss in membership of between 1% and 2%. In Germany the number of active glider pilots decreased by 4,115 pilots in ten years. This is roughly 11 %, but in the very last years the loss is in the range of 1.7% annually. Here we need an urgent strategy to stop this process.

Dear friends, this is, projected into the future, an alarming trend. For the “aging” of our community I could find no statistics. Never the less it is very obvious for me that this trend is as well in progress. Have a look to the glider clubs and you will be aware of the reality of this development.

Unfortunately it is more and more difficult to attract young people to our sport. What are the reasons and how, if at all, can we counteract?
IGC itself of course cannot directly counteract this problem. This has to be done by the NACs and the national federations. IGC however should analyse the reasons and find strategies that can be given via the NACs and national federations from the top down to the clubs.

We all know that in modern societies a vast variety of activities are offered to young people. What do young people seek? They certainly look for challenging and sportive activities with high profile and high profit for them in line with their life style.

What they also look for is an easy access and early success.

Here comes our first problem. In order to be a licensed glider pilot and so to enjoy the benefits of your learning you must study a lot, pay a lot, invest a lot of time and have a lot of patience. For those who accept all these conditions the result certainly pays off. But many others look for a more easy way to reach a similar flying thrill in shorter time and with less engagement.

They go to paragliding, where they get their brevet in a few weeks or even few days time at reasonable costs. Here we have competition in our own FAI house. By the way, it might be of interest: for similar reasons the number of hang glider pilots is also decreasing and, at the same time, the number of paraglider pilots is quickly increasing. There is however also some comfort in this fact. When those Hang- and Paraglider pilots get older they very often turn to gliding. I have many examples for this. One of the most prominent ones is Terry Delore from New Zealand.

Besides the relative small group coming from other air sports to gliding, where do our clients mainly come from?

Quite a remarkable number of youngsters have been raised on airfields. They are the daughters and sons of active or former glider pilots or any other pilots. Other young people have the idea to make a professional career out of flying and now look for an entry in avaition. Another group may find interest in flying initiated by Microsofts flight simulator programs to name just a few resources. But summarized it is still a relatively small group that approaches a club or a flying school in order to learn to fly. It is up to our clubs or schools to be attractive for newcomers. It must be in their own interest to be open-minded and to be willing to accept new members. It is also important to integrate new members quickly and so to bind them to the club, to the school and thus to the sport.

There should be no room for a closed shop mentality. Clubs should also create a family friendly environment. It is very important that our husbands, wives, fiancées and kids feel at home at our airfields. Take the principle of MacDonalds Hamburgers. "Look for and take good care of the kids, they are your future customers." Wherever possible have kiddies playgrounds at a safe part of your airfield, make your air fields visitor friendly. Give explanations whenever wanted. Offer guest rides. Wherever possible have an annual open house day showing your activities to the public and your fields neighbourhood. But do not greet your visitors with big road signs like: FORBIDDEN, NO TRESSPASSING, KEEP OUT or DANGEROUS!

Try to create youth groups in your clubs. Be sure to have also some nice young girls in this group. All this may sound very trivial to you, but I think that all these single items may contribute to a clubs success.

During the flying season go to a different airfield with your student pilots for a summer training camp and there you may start an initial simple type of competition flying. Of course all this is primarily and clearly relevant for those countries, where our sport is mainly conducted in clubs.

The best program I have ever heard of, to attract young boys and girls to our sport, is the children’s flying program in Lithuania. Unfortunately, because of regulatory restrictions, this is limited to Lithuania at the moment as far as I know. In this programme children, from 10 to 16 years of age, fly very solid, easy to handle simple gliders, comparable to early SG38s. They can go up only a few meters above ground. The activity is very safe. As I know there has never been a serious accident.

This children’s flying programme, as I see it, is really worthy of being developed and introduced to other countries. Possibly IGC can be helpful here in cooperation with our Lithuanian friends by drafting regulations and rules for this activity and by giving expert reports in order to convince national administrations to permit such a program.

In addition to the just mentioned children’s flying I see another possibility that could be much more helpful to open up new resources for our sport and our clubs. This program is directly linked to my next topic.

The burden of regulations, administration and cost explosion

Did you ever count how many bureaucratic hurdles you have to overcome before you are allowed to take off in your glider? Let me just mention a few of them. You must hold a valid license based on a valid medical. Before you are allowed to start your flight training you must prove that you are not a criminal person. You have also to complete a test in radiotelephony to be licensed to use a radio. For the beginner the biggest hurdle however is to pass the initial medical test at a central medical unit. (This applies to Europe now.) All these single steps cost you a lot of money.

Of course your airfield must also be registered according to the criteria set up by your country. Your glider must hold a type certificate, a certificate for airworthiness, a maintenance release, a registration and certification of the radio station and, if installed, of your transponder. All the maintenance and overhaul checks cost you another fortune. Besides the tremendous amount of money you have to pay for all this it may take weeks, in some cases, before the administration has worked through your files and gives you the green light.

Until then you are grounded.

In some countries, mainly in Europe, devolution of power has been provided from the governments. In these cases either the NACs or Federations issue the pilots licenses and issue in some cases as well the aircraft type and airworthiness certificates. In all these cases the costs for the users are significantly reduced, as the NAC or federation has to cover much lower overhead costs. The biggest number of such devolution of power to other entities is found in the field of microlights, hang and paragliders and parachutists.

In addition, for all these categories, which are defined to be air sports devices and not aircraft, less stringent rules and requirements apply. Also pilots’ licenses, including the medical requirements, are less stringent. It should be our aim to reach this status also for glider pilots and gliders. (The only countries, to my knowledge, where this has been achieved include the UK, NZ USA and Australia. But this ideal situation for the BGA in the UK is endangered now by the expanding activities of EASA). The IGC has a responsibility to set up a lobbying team to be active in this field or at least to delegate this task to a regulatory body that deals with these issues. In Europe we have Europe Air Sports and EGU. As EGU itself is not accredited by the EC, Eurocontrol nor EASA it makes sense to act here in cooperation with Europe Air Sports, as EAS is accredited at all these organisations.

We can be happy that we have quite a number of highly qualified specialists who represent us. They are volunteers who come from our own numbers and really do a hell of a difficult job for the benefit of our sport.

When arguing for our needs and requirements their opposites normally are highly paid lawyers or attorneys representing governments, high level administrations, airlines, pilots or air traffic controllers unions and so on. So the least we can do is to offer our specialists all the training, the information and the background they need to do their job for us. Of course this also costs us some money, but this is certainly a good investment into our future.

Unfortunately the harmonisation of European aviation law did not bring the relief we hoped to gain. The contrary is the reality. Especially with EASA, the burden of regulations has become even worse. It sounds silly, but the biggest success we can achieve today is to stay out of the aviation law harmonisation.

Earlier I mentioned a group of sports aviators who are not under the jurisdiction of EASA as far as licensing, certification and maintenance of the equipment is concerned. This group also includes microlight gliders. And that is exactly the additional potential I see when we look for young people to join our sport. As mentioned earlier in this case the medical requirements are much less stringent. The licensing as well is less stringent. The gliders are much cheaper to be built, certified and operated. The limited all up weight of the microlight gliders certainly is a disadvantage, but normally not this is such a factor for young sporting people.

I think IGC should support this possibility of a reasonable alternative entry in to our sport and integrate microlight glider flying in to our system. Once a pilot has gathered enough flight experience in this field most probably he will then turn to full-sized gliders and is then ready to start his ultimate dream to fly cross-country in an ETA.

Summarizing all the questions and topics I have raised so far I see good chances for IGC to manage the future of our sport in a positive way. On the regulatory side there are also chances at least to influence, by aggressive lobbying, the legislation as far as we are concerned, or even better, to get or keep us out of the general aviation law as far as possible. Certainly all this will demand a lot of effort and engagement from all of us. However without such activities and without a certain open mindedness to reform parts of our system we will definitely be on the losing side.

In the case of my final topic, the future access to airspace, I see the development and our influence unfortunately more critical.

Airspace: Will we be limited to a number of reservoirs like game reserves for endangered species?

That’s my question. There is one fact we all know about. There is no air sport without airspace.

Presently, mainly in Europe, big changes are in progress to establish the future airspace system. By mid March the most important question about at which flight level the "Z" border line dividing airspace "N" from "K (known)" or, as planned for a later stage of the project, from "U (unknown)" will be established. Depending from the outcome we will see how much uncontrolled or controlled airspace will be left for us and can be accessed by VFR traffic.

We will also see how our gliders have to be equipped to get access to controlled airspace. Transponders are already today a must in some areas. In the next few years we will have to go to Transponders mode "S".

The overall airspace restrictions are primarily threatening the core European states, Japan, some parts of the US and Canada and major areas around metropolitan areas worldwide. In the longer term these limitations will expand widely as commercial air traffic is forecasted to grow rapidly, for instance to double until the year 2015 compared to the amount of traffic at the turn of the century. It is not only this figure that gives us a headache, it is the fact that a big portion of this growth is caused by short haul regional traffic using small airports all over the countries. Certainly there will be some remote areas left for free airspace usage, but to get there and to create an infrastructure there will cost a tremendous amount of time and money. All these factors will definitely limit our flying activities or even end them in some areas.

What can we do? Most probably we will not be in a position to solve the problem in such a way that we will be able to conduct our flying activities like today. We might be able to negotiate arrangements that will still allow us to fly x-country, conditional to limitations that we will have to observe strictly. Be assured, we will have to fight for proper solutions, not by blocking airports or roads with our trailers and so alienating the public from us – as I hear it from time to time from our upset pilots – but by putting convincing arguments together, by seeking accreditation in top level meetings and, of course, by sending our highly qualified specialists there to negotiate on our behalf.

We should be prepared be to work out and to accept compromises, but that is still better compared to a situation where we gain nothing. This body, the IGC, can and shall not act itself of course, but you, dear delegates, you should feel responsible to find the right specialists and to get things moving. Identify those highly qualified specialists, support them and be ready to take over the expenses for their activities. Be assured it will pay off for the future of our sport.

Dear friends, I come to the end of my considerations. There is a lot to do, not only to beware the present but to safeguard the future of our sport. I see this assembly, the plenary of IGC, as a very capable, competent, motivated, engaged body determined to take the responsibility for our sport in the presence and in the future. This fact gives me much confidence in to the future development of our beloved sport of gliding.

Thank you.

Wolfgang Weinreich