What happened to the 45min res + variable? Or was it longer that 30 min?
You seem to forget that fuel reserves are no longer mandated by CASA they are stipulated in the company operations manual which is merely "accepted" by CASA. Maybe their ops manual said 30 minutes? But I agree I would have headed for Perth Airport.
Flying is so much cheaper now GAAP don't have RFFS isn't it? All these services get removed but the costs still seem to escalate at the same rate.