Heavylift’s bread and butter is charter work for the Australian government to Pacific nations. It is not permitted to operate domestically but when it suits the main players, it does. The 727, crewed by locals, is used domestically by AAE to back up its own 727s. The Belslow is crewed by refugees from England, as you would expect.
As regards the foreign AOC, they are operating two great old machines, so I suppose we could cut them a bit of slack. Besides, it gladdens my heart to see someone in a position where they can tell the local regulator to stick their regulations up where the sun don’t shine.
However, it’s a double-edged sword. It gives me the ****s when CASA can give me a hard time for a life vest that is two days past its TX date but others can operate with a dodgy AOC.
But they should survive this incident. They do have some heavyweight backers with their connection to Polar Air whose major client is the US government.