[thorn bird]

In one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Union’s policies in Europe and declares, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”

"Nasty ducker isn't he - UDB!"

Gobbles old mate, he was after all a founding father of the infamous "Iron Ring" so its to be expected he'd be somewhat bent. The parallels to Winston's famous speech are obvious, the whole world ignored his warnings and the cold war began, our industry is now engaged in a "Cold War" with a capricious, self serving bureaucracy, our very survival in jeopardy, when one thinks how long the cold war ran before the "Iron Curtain" came down I fear our industry will be gone, dead and buried. Perhaps we need a "Trump" with the slogan "Lets make aviation great again" and the courage to put CAsA in its place.

I have always found it passing strange that given the ten's of thousands of regulations all carrying a criminal record, not one could be found to prosecute DJ. Even a panel of the "Experts" couldn't agree on a single breach to stitch him up with. One would think somewhere in the myriad of confusion we call regulations you'd think there was something, for sure farting on the flight deck just has to be in there somewhere. But no, nothing, and anyone who imagines, if there was, Smart Aleck and his cohorts wouldn't have jumped on it are dreaming.

McComic wanted a scalp and there is ample evidence that the so called independent ATSB was manipulated to provide him with that scalp. After that it was fairly simple to enlist his infamous expert attack dog "Wodger Wabbit" to compile and enforce an embuggerance regime. A career ending judgement inflicted with no evidence, no oversight and no right of appeal.

DJ was required to resit the ATPL theory exams, buggered if I know why, I don't think in thirty years of International long haul operations I ever used anything I learnt for ATPL in anger. A real expert from industry ascertained that DJ's fuel calculations, done on the fly, were fairly accurate, as opposed to the cock up made by a CASA expert. Maybe in the interests of safety the CASA "expert" should have been required to resit the exams as well.

DJ doggedly completed all Wodgers embuggerances up to the point where big bucks were required, which he didn't have, and of course Wodger knew full well he didn't. The suspension of his licence was cunningly lifted, with a catch 22, just in case DJ found the money to go to the federal court, he still couldn't use the licence without spending a small fortune, but Smart Aleck could put his hand on his heart if it did go to court and say "But Millud, we gave it back to him".
The AAT is a furfey, given CASA's reputation of being a far from model litigant, the costs are pretty much the same to front the AAT where evidence can be ignored and hearsay accepted, against the federal court where the rule of law applies, evidence MUST be examined and hearsay excluded.

DJ was hung out to dry because McComic demanded it, why? One can only surmise, but "Political donations" puts a whiff of suspicion on the whole process.

DJ perhaps was foolish, but he did nothing that hadn't been done by others, his own chief pilot included, The same CP who vanished under the protective wing of mother hen CASA after the event. Was that another initiative by Smart Aleck to close off potential embarrassment for CAsA?
Wiser and more experienced heads would probably have ignored commercial pressure and waited in Samoa, got proper rest, then proceeded in daylight, the patient was non critical so there was no imperative to proceed.
But all the holes in the Swiss cheese slotted into alignment, from commercial pressure, lack of oversight, poor recourses and dodgy forecasts until DJ found himself in the unenviable position of having no back door and a decision required to either divert to an alternate and arrive with no fuel, or proceed to destination with at least enough for multiple approaches.
He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't, one thing is for sure, there is no way he'd make that mistake again and regardless of CASA's punitive embuggerance he'd be a safer pilot today than he was then.
Norfolk can be a bitch of a place at times, its caught a lot of pilots out. They were lucky and got away with it, but they all learnt a valuable lesson but missed out on a midnight swim. There but for the grace of god go I.