so we are not talking about regulation, but about enforcement of regulation. Those are two different things.
virginblue,
There are regulations (FTL's) regarding how many hours, days, accumulative hours, rest periods, days off a crew member may work.
I began to read the report of the Citywing (Manx2) ORK crash, from what I read it appeared the operator had crew members operating flights, but only on paper, when in reality it appeared that the first officer who lost his life in that crash had been working day duties as well as night duties whilst the first officer who the operator claimed to be operating some of those flights proved that he was nowhere near to Ireland during that period, he provided a boarding pass proving that he was back in Spain.
Now that operator was busting those regulations and clearly the Spanish authority didn't act sufficiently to enforce those regulations which could have been directly responsible for the subsequent loss of lives, this is serious sh1t!
With regards to the BMIr example you set, firstly inspections will take place at their operations centre, if systems are in place and paperwork in order then that is generally a pretty good sign, often the inspector will get a feeling if the operator are professional or a bunch of cowboys.
Then the inspector will do jumpseat rides, you mention a MUC base, without knowing BMIr's route network it is feasible that an inspector could jumpseat to/from MUC and do a couple of jumpseat rides whilst out there.
With a smile I recall our French inspector when I worked for a Luxembourg cargo operator, we had one aircraft working Europe and another aircraft working French Africa from/to CDG.
He wanted to jumpseat a rotation, we tried to persuade him to stay in Europe but he wasn't having any of it, the flight he rode was destination Bangui where there were thunderstorms resulting in the flight diverting to Kano. Upon arrival in Kano the Nigerian authorities determined that our inspector wasn't an operating crew member thus he had entered Nigeria illegally and they locked him up.
The subsequent telephone conversation we had with the first officer, once he had found a telephone, was one of those telephone conversations that one will never forget ... "Our inspector is in prison"
