Originally Posted by
The Wawa Zone
Bend, how high ? Well, as high as the political equation goes. I bet (in the current era) Scotty Morrison would refrain from dealing with anything below Mining and Technology. In the era of my example ... Bloggs and his Metros (and the financiers) are purely hypothetical, old boy !
This does allow some interesting wargaming, however.
Scenario - it is not an aggressive operator who initiates the Metro hypothetical, but the CASA Man himself who acquires some elementary golfing skills and sends out the feelers, motivated by a need to simplify his control of the industry and get rid of flying wrecks and their numerous operators. I have mentioned 'benefits' in my post above; are these benefits in any way devalued by the fact that regulatory rather than commercial maneuverings would eventually lead to a more generally beneficial end-state ?
Lead Balloon will possibly be asking if such action is ultra vires - 'beyond the power' wrt the CASA Man as an individual person and/or as a statutory entity.
But my comment was not hypothetical and the Metros and others were grounded by the 16.21 email.
When the media got hold of it over the weekend, CAsA reply was that the operator read the letter wrong! and that company was not grounded (only a sister company was) and that they had given the company till Monday to reply!! (a little odd letter COB Friday and required to reply Monday).
I had a chance to read the Friday letter, but did not - it would be very hard (impossible) to interpret that all aircraft were not grounded, I was told.
CAsA following the wishes of our elected governments would be a good thing, even just one of our governments. But CAsA has long been off the chain.