Moron
 

How did he manage to get caught?

Best not to tell or even hint.

This being social media, readable by all.

Virgin Flair??
 

First thing to note is that he apparently has Aspergers (only according to the media and I'm not making any assumptions, I'm not a Doctor but I imagine it may have had some affect on the whole drama) - I'm guessing the reason for the light/deferred sentence and the requirement for mental health services is that the court determined he didn't have the capacity to determine what he did or the consequences of it... I know people will think 'he knew what he was doing' but none of us were in his mind nor examined all the evidence.
Second thing and the most alarming IMHO is that he either left or was dismissed from his job at VA YET, according to media reports he still had his uniform... how the HELL did that happen... if it did then it's bloody slack... has no one in that organisation heard of PS1771??? Oh, sorry, forgot, most of the people making decisions either have no airline background or came straight to DJ from High School...
In any case, no employer can completely screen or predict what an employee will be like but considering the prolonged rubbish this one goes to with recruitment and the associated processes, maybe some reality needs to come into the process and there needs to be a tick box on an exit form "Uniform Returned - Yes/No"...

Industry Insider. The lefty's in Victoria do not like putting people in Jail.
AerialPerspective. I suspect the uniform was a hi-viz jacket.

I admire your empathy for this guy AreialPerspective. I think the photo of him in uniform is a quick selfie on the ramp before the offence. There is no mention of the uniform issue or VA being ‘slack’. I’m sure we could find thousands of non returned uniform examples at QF!

👍

One has to wonder about our pathetic judicial system in this case! The judge said …."such behaviour is totally unacceptable" yet it obviously is acceptable to the judge as he let the guy lose back in to the community! He's one sick individual but that's okay as he has been recycled by our broke system, all good!

Maybe this is yet another incident that emphasizes the need to evolve from plain VHF radio technology for digitial voice transmission. Public key encryption and signing would at least provide a way to identify the station calling safely (at least until quantum computers are in town) and rule out any prick with a transmitter from potentially wreaking havoc for the foreseeable future. Just to be clear, the encryption part would not be used as much because one would still want to enable other pilots to keep a listening watch but the signing part would allow any aircraft to verify the identity of the station calling.

Here's another thought: Not that I want to revisit the issue, but as a former baggage handler, this bloke certainly had an ASIC, hence a background check, thus proving yet again how useless this piece of plastic is.

Okihara, your solution just saddles Australian aviation with another cost. I have a simpler and cheaper solution: mandatory life imprisonment.

Inmates for life also don't come in cheap by today's rates either.

Exactly what I was trying to point out. All the geniuses on here who think they know more than the Judges, Juries and people who have studied law should just stop pontificating. As for the suggestion of life imprisonment... if it HAD been disastrous, is the life imprisonment going to bring back the victims??? This guy clearly had problems which are way beyond the 'expertise' of anyone here. By the way, pontificating about Victoria's legal system when the federal goons are trying to lock people up for exposing a fraud committed by the previous LNP government against a friendly nation to steal gas off them is a bit rich.

As for the example of shooting people, yeh, because what we really want to do is have people running around with deadly weapons like another Western so-called democracy I could mention.

Regarding the uniform... at lease one news outlet commented that the carrier had failed to get his uniform back and there is no suggestion he took a selfie on shift before committing the act as someone has stated. Clear implication is that he was dismissed and failed to return his uniform and he then obtained a radio (probably stole it from the office before leaving, if so, another example of poor accounting).

So because he was young, and had Aspergers, he avoided prison time. Yet he was old enough, and mentally capable enough, to hold an ASIC. :hmm:

I think you'll find while there are criminal checks for ASIC they largely look at serious crime(s) and politically motivated violence... if none of that is present or is below the threshold then he would have got an ASIC... I'm sure I read in the news that he was dismissed from his job (may be wrong but I'm sure that's what I read and heard on TV news) so obviously the ASIC was cancelled when he was dismissed.

What's your solution... no one ever gets an ASIC just in case they might become a criminal???

"...The court heard just before the hoax calls, Sant had lost his job at Virgin Australia as a baggage handler but had continued to put on his uniform and pretend to go to work..."