Return of the Nomad?

The April - June 2008 edition of Aero Australia magazine contained an intriguing news item, which claimed that Gippsland Aeronautics was seeking to purchase the manufacturing rights to the Nomad STOL (short take-off and landing) aircraft from Boeing Australia.

The Nomad was a controversial, although some say needlessly maligned, aircraft designed and built by the Government Aircraft Factory (GAF) in Australia. Design work on the aircraft commenced in the mid-1960s, with the first prototypes taking flight in 1971.

Intended for use by military and commercial operators, the Nomad was built to operate successfully from rugged environments, and could even be flown as a seaplane. However, the aircraft's history was plagued by a series of fatal accidents, and was subject to ongoing criticism about its allegedly major design flaws.

Despite being sold to several military services and civilian operators throughout Asia and Australia, eventually only 170 Nomad aircraft were built, before production ceased in the early 1980s. In 1985, the Government Aircraft Factory was renamed Aerospace Technologies of Australia (ASTA), and continued to operate under that name for a decade, until it was sold off by the Australian government in 1995 to Rockwell Systems Australia which, in turn, was purchased by Boeing Australia in 1996.

Both the GAF Nomad and the Gippsland Aeronautics GA8 Airvan are featured in Airborne Australia. It will be fascinating to see if this news story, as reported in Aero Australia, develops further. Who knows? If a follow-up edition of our book appears down the track, we might need to make space for a new, improved 21st century Nomad!

Interested readers should check their local library to see if they have a copy of Aero Australia Issue 2 (April - June 2004), which has an excellent article, 'Nomad: The Unwanted Child', written by the magazine's editor, Stewart Wilson, that charts the aircraft's troubled history. (Image courtesy of the Aeroplane Art Company)