So CASA got time to comply sort themselves out and were not 'grounded' i.e. Australian carriers banned from international airspace in the mean time. The rest of the world reading the ICAO audit might have been justified in calling for such an immediate ban - eg Indonesia.
Maybe...but they didn't. Guess they figured that the Aussies were an acceptable risk and the Indonesian carriers weren't.
It appears that Tiger were given time to address CASA's concerns and failed to do so. How many second (third, fourth etc) chances should they have had? How much warm 'n' fuzzy? Until they have a prang, which IIRC is when the Indonesians got booted out of Europe? Virgin were read the Riot Act by CASA some years ago over maintenance issues and threatened with a loss of ETOPS, so they addressed the issues and haven't had any notable regulatory dramas since then.
Haven't the low cost carriers actually offered huge opportunities and improved remuneration for a lot of pilots in Australia?
No, they haven't. They have driven down pay and conditions across the industry, not just for pilots but particularly for ground workers and engineers. This is why so many posters are bitter and twisted about Jetstar and to a lesser degree, Tiger. In fact Jetstar has attracted far more vitriol than Tiger because they're part of Qantas.
FWIW I agree with you that the 'nah-nah, Tiger suck' posts are distasteful, because many decent people work for Tiger and have been badly affected. In particular, their casual, sub-contracted badly paid flight attendants have not been told what is going on or paid since the grounding.
Tiger Airways cabin crew on their own | Courier Mail
Maybe CASA have cocked up, maybe Tiger cocked up. I doubt anyone will know the true story for a while, if ever. However, you seem to be assuming that CASA have overreacted due to politics, racism or other non safety related reasons. Given the information available at the moment, I don't think that's a fair assumption. It may turn out to be 100% correct, but I don't see that it's a foregone conclusion.
CASA would have made this decision knowing full well that there would be an avalanche of scrutiny and bad PR karma for them. Sure they grounded Ansett, but that was nearly a decade ago and government departments have gotten a lot more conscious of public opinion (and arguably a lot more wussy) since then. Like all regulatory departments they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. When they go softly everyone says they're in the airlines' pockets or have ulterior motives. When they do something everyone says they're too harsh or have ulterior motives.
Last edited by Worrals in the wilds; 5th Jul 2011 at 09:01.