P.W, I would agree that any decision that a pilot or engineer makes every day in his/her job has the potential to cost the company a lot of money or worse. The requirements for new gen aircraft do not change anything - even if the manufacturers are all preaching that thier aircraft dont need this or that. Individal req'mts are all covered in their respective DDG's with respect to failures.
The bottom line is, either the aircraft was dispatched ETOPS or it wasn't and if it was, and an ETOPS relevant failure occured enroute, you would need to make alternate arrangements to satisfy your new limitations.
Whatever cost is carried by the company is irrelevant, you didnt break the jet yourself so you follow the guidelines and put it down or go the long way around.
Or are you saying you make a judgement call yourself outside of these guidelines to save the company money? I would be suprised if you as a proffesional would want to even consider going down that path. (Not saying you do by the way)
Aussie,
CASA is not letting them through free of charge, they have to undergo the same process, except they do not need to wait as long, as, QF has a history with the aircraft and it is still being handled by QF engineering. The part that takes the longest is the reliability figures that need to be shown over a period of time at reduced or NON etops (So, you use the QF figures as these are the same aircraft fixed by the same people). They also need to be able to track ETOPS parts (reason why
VB lost theirs) and other things - all this before a pilot steps on-board.
The only difference will be the crews up front and CASA will only be wanting to see that they are appropriately trained to deal with an ETOPS significant failure it does not take as long to tick that box.
Think this is a lot of scare mongering in a last ditch effort really.