What is interesting to me, is that the real issue and the driving force behind ANY regulatory move like this, is the safety implications. Ive heard gripes about costing this and that, and students not having a training aircraft etc, and yet here we are, supposedly all safety conscious pilots who uphold the ideals of airmanship and safety as our prime directive, and nobody has even mentioned the word safety in their rumblings. We all sprout such high morals and high standards of airmenship and safety UNTIL it hurts our pockets..Then the true motives and the true "spirit" of the aviator comes to the fore. We are all so busy watching the back account, and crying blue bloody murder on CASA, and not looking at the underlying safety message thats literally smacking us up the side the head. Anybody that has dealt with CASA would know exactly how serious a matter would need to be before they took this un precidented action against a company.
I dont agree with the methods of CASA here, but the message is not new, and has not come lightly.