Updated
CASA will meet the management of Tiger Airways today. (AAP: Tiger Airways)
Tiger Airways is already selling tickets for travel next week, even though the budget airline's grounding may be extended.
The carrier's domestic services were grounded on Friday by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) amid "systemic" safety concerns.
But the airline is selling tickets for travel from Saturday, even though CASA will decide later this week if it needs to go to the Federal Court to seek an extension of the grounding.
Tiger Airways CEO Tony Davis is in Melbourne today for talks with CASA over its decision to ground the budget airline.
The industry regulator says it will be seeking a plan from the airline on what it is doing to address safety concerns.
The Australian and International Pilots Association says a week is not a long time and it doubts Tiger will be back in the air by Saturday.
"The core issue is whether the authority is going to be happy with seeing a plan on paper or whether they want to see the actuality," the association's Richard Woodward said.
"They have got to convince the civil authority that they have got a plan to rectify the issues they've got.
"And if they are training in standardisation issues then the very least they have to do is convince the civil authority that they can standardise all of their training captains and then each of their line pilots and that's a big task you couldn't do that in a week."
CASA spokesman Peter Gibson says the airline only has until Saturday to prove it has a plan to address safety concerns.
"The safety issues of course range across pilot performance, going back to the show-cause issues we issued earlier this year, also issues such as the control of maintenance," he said.
Mr Gibson is hopeful the authority will not have to extend the grounding beyond next weekend.
"We certainly are very mindful of the fact that this is causing disruption to people, that is causing people's travel plans obviously to be stopped this week," he said.
"So we will get on and do as much work as we can as quickly as possible to resolve these issues but of course we have always got to put safety first."
Mr Woodward also says the grounding of Tiger Airways should be a wake-up call for the aviation industry.
"When you trim and sell a ticket for an unrealistic price then eventually something has got to give," he said.
"I think we are reaching the point in aviation where they are trimmed right to the bare bones, where we are now seeing service suffer and these sort of issues coming up."
In a statement on its website, Tiger Airways says it is in the process of contacting affected customers who will be offered a full refund or credit for deferred travel while working with the industry regulator to lift the grounding.
"Tiger Airways continues to cooperate fully with the industry regulator and the week ahead will be a busy one as we continue to work with CASA to reassure them, resolve the concerns they have raised and aim to resume our services as quickly as possible," Tiger said in the statement.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is also conducting an investigation into the airline.
ATSB chief commissioner Martin Dolan says its investigations will take some time.
"We've currently got two investigations that I'm aware of on the books that involve Tiger," he said.
"We have to juggle resources to get them done as quickly as possible. It can take up to a year."
As the safety investigator, the ATSB's role in regards to Tiger's grounding is quite different to CASA's.
"Our job is to find out where things go wrong with overall system of safety and to ensure that something is done to prevent a recurrence," Mr Dolan said.
"Our aim is for improving the system overall rather than looking at whether a particular operator is in compliance with the rules and procedures and so on."
The airline has not returned the ABC's calls.
First posted
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/07/04/3260054.htm
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