I guess it’s more economical to do the checks on shorter sectors within Australia than on overseas sectors. Would that be the reason?
The positioning flights were used because there were a lot of them. The check requirement was two sectors or two hours, so many of the checks were actually the sectors there and back. Using longer sectors also happens, but it has implications with paxing people around, and potentially having to move people off their planned flights. It was common to be bumped off sectors like Sydney-Melbourne if they were at the start or end of longer trips.
Do all positioning flights have cabin crew?
Not all.
At what point during the assessment did the checkie realise you had never flown a light twin before?
Taxiing in. There were two of us from the military, and the other bloke was a RAAF Caribou person. Can't have been too bad.
Qantas have been giving one of their A380s a workout out of sydney today. Currently on its third takeoff of the afternoon and about to come into land again. I would be interested to know the likely reason for the multiple takeoff and departures over the past 3 hours, is it likely to be training? just putting the aircraft through it's paces?
Pilot refamils. Each Captain and FO (already qualified on the aircraft prior to covid) gets two of these short flights before returning to line ops.
No Macchi time? Was the A-4G a trainer? Regardless would have been an exciting ride....
Ha ha. I was only talking about the progression from the navy to QF (which was the question). The A-4G was the last navy aircraft that I flew.
The full career progression runs Piper Cherokee, CT4, Macchi, TA-4G and A-4G, CT4 QFI, 747 SO, 747 FO, 744 FO, 767 Captain, 744 Captain, 380 Captain.