Good afternoon and a warm welcome to all members here present at this year’s 47th Annual General Meeting.
It gives me great pleasure to deliver this year’s annual general meeting President’s report. In fact there are quite a number of important events for the club to report and I will keep it brief.
Firstly, I will touch on the subject of Administration. Our club has hired a Club Administrator in the person of Steve Law who has taken the role of a multi tasker at the club, carrying out management, accounting and web and database management. He has also helped to reorganise the filing system with the help of our part time staff, Ms Susey Mongool whom we have sponsored in the past in her studies.
As promised in last year’s AGM speech, our membership is now all in the computer database coupled with a more effective subscription monitoring system. It has assisted the club to detect and rectify scores of defaulters and brought subscriptions up to date.
General Committee members can now access the current accounts at any time through the internet via password entry.
Our club’s website is finally running with a difference. We no longer hire webmasters to design and maintain our website which in the past always was either poorly maintained or poorly updated. Our website is now maintained in house with the purchase of our own server and hosting the website ourselves means we can effortlessly update regularly.
Last year, we started work on the interior of the club house and replaced all the old and hazardous electrical wirings and I am proud to see a huge improvement in our upstairs admin and members lounge.
We then started to work on the downstairs former gym to turn it into a modern lecture room. As the room was in a poor state and extremely noisy during nearby Terminal 2 aircraft activity, it was decided to also soundproof the room. This was successfully done, the room repainted and re-carpeted and new furniture put in. In addition, for lecture purpose, the room was fitted with modern Audio Visual system to aid classroom lectures.
Recently, our club successfully negotiated with the authorities to stay on the land side. The original plan for KKIA was that the entire Sabah Flying Club will be fenced inside the air side.
If the new security fencing is carried out it will be extremely detrimental to our members and
guests who seek free access to our Club facilities as they have enjoyed these facilities for many decades such as social activities and members gathering that includes public involvement.
The compromise is that we will have to seal off all access from our club to the airside so that our building acts as part of a fence. Sealing or grilling of all windows upstairs will pose a problem in case of a fire and so the next renovation plan for our club will be to re-open a staircase adjacent to the upstairs toilet and create an alternative fire escape to the outside.
This will, in my opinion, be best carried out together with the repainting of the exterior of the building which is in urgent need for improvement in the next Committee year.
Our Flight Operations is very well administered by Capt Fong Shau Fah our CFI and by Albert James our Assistant Flight Instructor. Their role besides over seeing flying activities and training also require them to look into the constant maintenance of the aircraft and to keep in touch with all matters relating to aviation and training with DCA.
I am happy to report that for 2011, for PPL training hours , C of Test hours , and Currency hours resulted in a total of 113 hours . Social and recreational flying totalled 19 hours and I am happy to say that this constitutes an increase of 25 % in flying hours compared to 2010. I wish to therefore thank and congratulate all who made this effort.
On the 16th -17th September 2011 in commemoration of the Malaysia day as well as the joint collaboration with DCA for the 100th year of aviation in Malaysia Kudat was chosen to kick start the celebration. Sabah Flying Club organised joy rides for the school students of Kudat namely the students of SRJK St Peter and SMK Kudat with the teachers as requested by Mr Richard Liau. In addition to high demand for flying we managed to sneak in 8 students of SMK Lok Yuk Kudat as well as the public. 162 passengers were flown within the 3 days by Capt Fong, our GC member En Mahmud and Albert James. Together with Sabah Air’s effort, a total of 202 passengers were given joy rides.
The other aviation related activity was our club’s participation at the annual Hot Air Baloon Fiesta in the Philippines. Unfortunately, due to weather, our club’s plane had to turn back and the journey to Clark was aborted. A total of 11 members went by Air Asia for the event.
Some of our members will recall that we have in the past been operating at the Keningau airfield but it was for many years a burden due to our club’s problems with a local operator that resulted in legal litigation. Keningau also proved to be a bit too far for training purposes.
I am very happy to say that the DCA has now approved for SFC to manage the Kuala Penyu Airfield with code WBKU.
Our club has financed the repairs to and the repainting of the runway markers, installed a wind sock and restored the runway by removal of shrubs and bushes and cutting the grass. The DCA financed the re fencing of the airfield which has helped to stop the problem of buffalos grazing on the runway.
On the 24 Nov 2011, Dr Zainul of DCA Airport Standards inspected the airfield and gave his approval and subsequent to this, a soft opening was carried out on the 18th January 2012 . The attendance was overwhelming with the Bomba, JKR, Hospital, the District Office, TUDM and Police in attendance together with local village chiefs.
We have appointed our own member Thomas Estolas from Kuala Penyu to be our Liaison Officer to oversee the airfield operations and engaged a local village chief who resides near the entrance to the airfield to oversee our security.
Our plans for our site office or “airport” have been submitted to the local authorities for approval. I would like to thank our member Richard Liau for designing the plans.
The Kuala Penyu airfield will be a solution to training as the KKIA has become very congested and training will be give a smaller window of opportunity. Kuala Penyu aviation activities is part of our on going community service to that area as well.
On the subject of community service, besides the joy rides and flying training, our club continues to sponsor students who will benefit from our grants. I am pleased to report that Susey Mongool and Voo Ken Hiung obtained 1A, 2Bs and 1 C and Ruslan Ruskin obtained 2 Bs and 2Cs. These results will allow them to enter University or some other college. Had it not been for the grant, they would not have been able to continue their studies and even if they could , their results would have been bad as they had to work even at night to support themselves. I would like to thank our member Moritz Gubler for his kind donation toward this fund.
Our club is in very good financial health with nett assets amounting to close to a million ringgit which our Honorable Treasurer will report shortly however we would need to continue to save more to achieve our goal of buying a new aircraft. We may have not bought a new plane but we have bought a new Mitsubishi Triton twin cab to replace the Proton Saga that was sold. The Triton was decided as we will need to carry both personnel and fuel to Kuala Penyu Airfield.
We continue to work with our associates, ie Layang Layang Aerospace at our hangar who also maintain our aircraft and with Suntrealty Sdn Bhd who manage our gaming machines and thank them for the excellent partnership.
Finally, my thanks to the outgoing General Committee for a job well done and after the elections, a new General Committee will, I hope, continue the on-going projects as well as plan new ones to keep our Flying Club active and strong.
Thank you and a very good afternoon.
The President
Leonard Chin
24March2012