Re Hardys, these guys are huge, I have recently left as a pilot however the time and effort the family and people in main roles in both operations and C&T put into this place are why they are so good. There has been a few changes over the past year in the managment structure maybe this is why no deputy cheif pilot was made, engineering has been expanded and more managers put on, a new hangar is being used to support the large fleet. One of my friends was brought in as a check and trainer along with a few others at the start if the year to help with new pilots. The operations dep has a new younger ops manager that has generated a lot of work and brought up moral. Andrew Hardy has moved into a more senior role.
Hardy's employee a huge range of engineers, buy the best aircraft (im sure as pilots we have all seen the new flash 441's arriving) and most of the pilots they employee are highly experienced. They pick up the slack when all the other airlines in Darwin need a crosshire including the big operators like Airnorth. tell me how much would the NT Goverment be charged if hardyaviation got closed and the main competition in Darwin was Gone?
CASA's focus on them has put a downer on things, but given they are still flying non stop VFR shows there clients are not concerned. Sounds like a few people at CASA in Darwin have a bad taste in there mouth from previous experiences to me... Hope they get over it