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Airline grounded on safety concernsBy Kim Christian
June 27, 2008 09:45pm
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THE Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has grounded a Cairns-based airline in Queensland after it allegedly failed to meet pilot training and safety standards.

A CASA spokesman said Aero-Tropics, which flies 15 small aircraft to remote northern regions at Cape York, Thursday Island and the Torres Strait, was served with a notice to ground all aircraft at 6pm (AEST) today.

"We believe they pose a serious and imminent risk to air safety," a CASA spokesman said.

The grounding comes after a 10 month investigation into training and the checking of pilots at the airline.

"We've had an investigation going since last September into Aero-Tropics, we have found a number of deficiencies in that 10 months," the spokesman said.

"We've issued a number of notices to the airline... to make improvements and put them on notice that we were dissatisfied with their performance.

"In effect they have not improved anything and in recent days we've done more investigations and in fact found that safety standards have got worse."

He said CASA had uncovered a pattern of failures to meet the aviation safety standards within the airline.

"We've tried to work with the airline to get them to improve the standards, they've failed to do that," he said.

"That also leads us to have a lack of confidence in the management of the airline to actually treat their commitment to safety as seriously as they should."

He said the decision was not made due to any incidents with the fleet of 15 seven to 11-seater aircraft or the pilots operating them.

The airline will be grounded for at least five days.

CASA will now apply to the Federal Court for a 40 day extension to the grounding.

"Within that 40 days we have to build a case to either permanently cancel their certificate, put them on the ground permanently, or of course alternatively, the airline can build a case to say why they should be allowed to continue to fly," the spokesman said.

Air services to the region will be disrupted over the weekend and into next week.

A recorded message left on Aero-Tropics' answering machine said it would challenge the decision in the Federal Court on Monday.

"It is with great regret that I must advise the communities of the Torres Strait that we have been forced by the authorities to cancel all flights until this matter is resolved," the message said.

"It is my expectation that this matter will be tried in the immediate (future) before the Federal Court early Monday morning.

"There is a possibility that Aero-Tropics can recommence operations sometime on Monday."

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