Owen said:
I have my doubts that this actually happened.
That was in response to this “story” (thorn bird’s word):
A company wins a contract and needs "international" added to their AOC, they need things done as quickly as possible and cant afford time to haggle or complain.
FOI doing the approval decides he needs to do a "Proving" flight under some regulation that says "May" not "Must", to assess the international part of the operation.
This in a light jet, over a route around six hours long, most of which will be conducted in Australian airspace the last thirty minutes or so in international airspace. The operation is airwork, not charter.
The crews for this operation have a combined total of around 50,000 hours of international experience in fairly large machinery all over the world.
Our FOI has never operated outside Australia, is not even type rated on the aircraft and has a...shall we say "colorful" background in GA.
This operator is obliged to fork out around thirty grand so this nupty can sit in the back of an empty aircraft and assess what?
601 said:
So we have a crew who, judging on the content of TB post, had extensive international experience, is subject to a "proving flight" audited by a person who has no experience outside of Oz and not type rated on the aircraft.
I don’t understand what the impediment is to naming the FOI and the operator.
For a start, if the facts asserted in the story are true, there is nothing defamatory of the FOI in question. If the story is true, why not name the FOI?
Secondly, if the facts asserted in the story are true, the nasty people in CASA already know who the operator is, and the nasty people in CASA already know that the operator has been telling the story. Therefore, not naming names isn’t protecting the operator from retribution from those nasty people in CASA.
So: Who was the FOI and who was the operator?