Wow - it looks like the person who drafted the email you received didn’t reconcile the dates in the email with the dates in the announcement on the CASA website:
https://www.casa.gov.au/publications.../february-2018
Note the weasel words and dates I’ve highlighted:
Another of the announced reforms to aviation medicine is on track to be implemented by late March 2018. This change will allow all designated aviation medical examiners (DAMEs) to issue Class 2 medicals on the spot without reference to CASA, unless the DAME elects to refer the application to CASA. Allowing DAMEs to directly issue Class 2 medicals should simplify and speed up the medical process for hundreds of applicants each month. I can also advise the new Basic Class 2 medical certificate – based on the Austroads commercial vehicle driver standards – is on track to be introduced in the middle of 2018.
“Implemented from early April 2018” is not the same as “implemented by late March 2018”. I reckon someone thought errrmmm, let’s squeeze another couple of weeks into the weasel words, just in case. Whatever the truth, it beggars belief that the new DAS would risk making inaccurate predictions about the timing of changes, rather than just getting on and
making the promised changes, first, then announcing that the changes have been implemented.
Let’s hope the predictions turn out to be ball-park accurate. But, based on previous and extensive form, I don’t believe any predictions CASA makes. My all-time favourite is the evidence given to a Senate Committee by a previous DAS,
13 years ago, about when the rewrite of the regulations was going to be completed:
We have an action item to develop a plan to forward to the the minister about when we plan to have them to the minister, and I assume that plan would be done in the next couple of months. I would be hopeful that it would not be long after early 2006 that most of the draft rules are delivered to the minister.