CASA Boss Surprise

May 21, 2009

He’s actually a pilot!

After years of treating CASA as a convenient scratching post, Brian Bigg gets to know the new boss and finds that he’s… well… he’s just like us.

Sometime in the next couple of years you’re going to be walking around the aircraft parking area at a fly-in somewhere in Australia and you’ll come across a spotless red Yak 50.

You might even start up a conversation with the bloke who flew it in and who is standing there polishing it lovingly. It’s probably best you don’t take the opportunity at that moment to have a whinge about CASA. Because, chances are, the bloke you’re talking to is CASA.

John McCormick has just slotted into the role of CASA CEO, left vacant by the departure of Bruce Byron. For GA the best news about that is – he’s a pilot too, always has been. Like most of us he talks with his hands and thinks there’s nothing more romantic than smelling like kerosene or Avgas.

And, regardless of his new role as Australian aviation’s chief enforcer, he says he plans to keep spending his weekends in the air in his Yak and going to fly-ins, just as often as he can. But what would John say if the bloke admiring his Yak did take the chance to have a bleat about the organisation we all see as an uncaring monolith, resistant to all change, which exists only to make our lives more difficult. Probably he’d be polite and listen to your opinion and offer something intelligent and thoughtful as a response. You see, he doesn’t strike you as a bloke who would turn around and say “Listen here, you dope. Let me tell you how many ways your aeroplane doesn’t meet the standards. You’ll be driving home today, son.”

No, he looks and sounds just like he should after a lifetime of taking and giving orders – first in the air force and then in the airlines.

He speaks with authority, he has no problem making decisions and even in a suit, he looks like he is in uniform. He has actually been in a uniform since he was a boy. John was born and bred in Brisbane. In Nundah, in fact. And anyone who knows Nundah knows what goes over your house most days when the wind is blowing a particular direction. It sparked an interest in the young fellow. “I used to go to the airfield with dad to watch the aeroplanes takeoff and land,” recalls John.

“My father had learned to fly on a scholarship before WW2 and ended up in the RAAF.”

“My first flight was when I was 6. He took me with him in a TAA plane on a Sunday around the airfield. I still remember it. “He always encouraged me to fly.”

John was interested enough to join the air training cadets, a familiar path for a lot of boys with a burgeoning aviation addiction. At 16, he won a scholarship for a PPL at the Royal Aero Club at Archerfield.

“I was always going to join the air force,” he says. “To be a pilot – to fly fighters, just like every young man dreams.” “But when I finished my PPL, the RAAF was cutting back at the end of Vietnam.

“So I started to do my CPL instead, working where and how I could to pay for the lessons. Dad helped me out a lot with that, too.“ By the time John had completed his CPL, the RAAF had started recruiting again, and by now he had the qualifications they were after.

He was posted to 2OCU where he learned to fly Mirages. He was sent to Malaysia and Singapore as part of Australia’s commitment to the five nation’s treaty. “I flew a lot there, hundreds of hours a year on all sorts of missions. It was a lot of flying when you consider most of my flights each lasted less than an hour. Mirages are brilliant to fly. Highly manoeuvrable. They could do everything… air combat attacks, ground attacks, bombing.”

He gained so much experience he was posted to 77 Squadron in Williamtown in 1979 then went to 2OCU in 1980 to do the fighter combat instructor’s course. That’s our version of Top Gun, where the best of the best go to learn to be even better.

He’s not the sort of bloke to admit it, but he must have a bit of the right stuff in him because at the end of the course, rather than go back to the squadron, he was asked to stay on and become an instructor himself.

One weekend, during this period, he went to his best friend’s wedding. A dashing young, single, fighter pilot at a wedding? He’s probably lucky to have escaped with his uniform intact. As it was, his best friend’s cousin, Rayna, spotted him across the room just as he spotted her. They were married two years later.

Now a happy family man and a fair dinkum Top Gun, John was sent back to Malaysia, this time as a fighter combat instructor. One of his memories of this time was when he was sent to America to collect our first FA-18’s. Don’t get him started talking about those beautiful birds.

But the air force life is a young man’s life. And as John approached 30 with a growing family, he knew he needed to find something which would give them more stability.

He hung up the Ray-Bans and was welcomed with open arms by Qantas, which was growing quickly and needed pilots for its new 747-200’s. He ended up only staying a couple of years.

“We had really enjoyed living in Asia,” he says. “So when Cathay Pacific offered me a place in their ranks in Hong Kong I jumped at the chance to go back there.”

His airline career blossomed with Cathay. He flew as first officer and then later in command on Tristars. He made check and training captain, then flying training manager.

In 1994 Cathay bought into the development of the new Boeing 777 and put John in charge of introducing it into the fleet. “The 777 is a tremendous aeroplane,” he says. “It had the best control harmony and flying characteristic of any aircraft in that class.”

In 1997 he became flying training manager for 747-400’s, then manager / trainer on all Boeing aircraft, then chief check pilot of Cathay’s 747-400 and 777 fleet. Clearly Cathay saw him as a bloke who could get the job done when it came to heavy metal.

There came a time though, as with all careers, when you get promoted to a level where the desk replaces the cockpit. Cathay needed a General Manager in charge of regulatory compliance, aircraft and flight test evaluation. And guess who was the best qualified of the bunch to do it?

He didn’t give up flying entirely, of course. When Cathay decided to buy the Airbus, John became check captain on both the 340 and 330. But the signposts were there. When John’s son decided on an Australian university, the family came back with him. Finding a new job wasn’t a problem.

“I was approached about a previous job in CASA and had offers from the Middle East, the UK and the US, but I wouldn’t leave Hong Kong for them.”

However, just about the same time as he started to think about cutting back on his travelling, he was approached about the top job in Australian aviation. “I applied and here I am.”

In contrast to his air force and his airline careers, John’s entry into the world of GA is only a recent one. He bought his YAK at Archerfield only last year.

“I most probably couldn’t afford it and I didn’t need it, so it’s lucky I don’t own two of them,” he jokes.

“I was looking for a single seat aeroplane. The Yak is fun to fly and won the world aerobatics championships a few times.

“It’s an honest aeroplane, which requires honest flying skills and satisfies me because I like the challenge. It’s a different category to a cruising aircraft.

“My aim is to get to as many airshows in it as I can. I see my role as being more than just pushing paper around.

“Having said that, for the first two months I’ve been in the job it’s rained or stormed every weekend.”

And, as for jumping the fence and joining the dark side?

At one of his first ever press conferences just before this edition went to press, John was very much the airline captain. Judicious with his words and actions, careful not to blame the previous administration for any of the ills of the industry. Careful too, not to promise more than he knows or believes he can deliver in the time he has at the helm.

He faces a tough job in a difficult department in a troubled time. Forces resistant to change have seen off good men before him. But he deserves a shot and our support.

It may just be that when you see him at the fly-in he might actually like some advice from you. Try it and see what he says.