The chaos at Sydney Airport today when there was a brief power failure at the international terminal and a consequent day long screw up affecting many thousands of travellers needs to be considered realistically. Get over it. No-one in power really gives a damn. Sydney Airport is a monopoly given a charter to rip off [...]
In reports which the French accident investigators have already slammed for being simplistic and incomplete Le Figaro and Le Monde say Air France flight AF447 was destroyed by (variously) pilot panic and errors and a lack of training in dealing with high speed stalls at altitude. However it will be some time before the investigators [...]
Senator Nick Xenophon says he will seek to introduce a private member’s bill that would prevent airlines using foreign based cabin crews on domestic flights in Australia. The bill follows the ABC TV Lateline program on Wednesday which showed that Jetstar was working Thai based cabin crew provided by Tour East Thailand (which is 37% [...]
At first glance, a statement from CASA today entitled ‘Tiger Airways suspension update” doesn’t seem to change anything that the airline and the safety regulator said yesterday. TIGER AIRWAYS SUSPENSION UPDATE The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has given Tiger Airways Australia a set of conditions which can form the basis for the airline resuming operations. [...]
CASA has served Tiger Airways Australia with a list of conditions it must comply with in order to resume its domestic flights, and the airline has issued a statement saying it expects to return to the skies soon. The Tiger statement says: CASA has today issued Tiger Airways Australia with a set of formal conditions [...]
Tiger Airways Australia has backed away from media reports yesterday that it would resume flights on August 6. However it remains coy as to when it might take off following its July 1 grounding by CASA as a threat to public safety. That date, which might yet be August 6, can only be named once [...]
Updated with response on ABC News 24 by Jetstar Group CEO, Bruce Buchanan The controversy that has broken out this morning over Jetstar’s use of cheap Asian labor as cabin crew on domestic sectors in Australia relates to some critical safety issues. The most important of these is that the principal role of cabin attendants [...]
Updated As anticipated earlier, Qantas was right on top of this, has inspected all of its Q400s, and found no issues. The Flight Safety Foundation has drawn attention to the following urgent airworthiness directive issued to operators of the Bombardier Dash 8-400 or Q400 series of 72 seat turboprops widely used in Australia by Qantaslink [...]
Last night’s ABC TV Lateline investigation of Jetstar labor arrangements on flights operating on both international and domestic ‘tag’ services raised some severe safety concerns for Australian travellers. While some of those concerns reflect testimony taken by the recent Senate inquiry into pilot training and airline safety in Australia, Lateline also uncovered additional material. It [...]
For those who find the UK-Australia flights somewhat crowded and boring, Dave Sykes, who sometimes answers to ‘Spokes’ or ‘Wheely,’ has an alternative. The paraplegic microlight pilot and adventurer, who set out from York on April 28, has now reached Bali, and hopes to make his first Australian touchdown in Darwin soon. So stop whinging [...]
