In defense of some of the employees of the regulator...
I had the pleasure to deal with the Darwin office on a number of occasions.
The service and support I recieved from the team there was quite surprising considering the reputation investigators have.
Thing is there aint enough of them. A huge workload on a very small number of people. Its a job which will by definition ensure you have no friends and everyone hides when you walk in! Having been through a number of CASA based audits, the contract audits such as the mining contracts are far worse by comparison!
I was one whose logbook was always audited with no faults and eventually it became a running source of humour.
The companies have been given recommendations to follow but often havent been critisized without reason. In fact have gotten off rather lightly.
Thing is if you treat your people with respect, your people look after the airplanes, the customers and the paperwork. They also have reasonable relations with the regulators on the field as the regulator can tick the boxes and know they dont have to look much deeper.
If they have a substantial reason to suspect problems, they have every right to investigate them do they not?
Ive seen the odd vindictive person, but they dont seem to last long. People dont cooperate easily with such investigators and as a result performance is a problem.
Some of the outcomes lie at the feet of the legal system whether those outcomes be good or bad in the opinons of the participants. Creampuff has covered that side rather well.
On the surface of it, there appears to be occasional errors of justice, but i wasnt there, I didnt have anything to do with the cases and therefore am not in a position to comment.
Sometimes I wish CASA were able to do half the things they were accused of! Many undermaintained, undercutting, pilot cheating employers would have been wiped out long ago.