VS Airbus low over Derby today

Don't know how many people on here are from the the Midlands - but at about 4pm today, a VS A340-600 was doing a *very* low pass over Derby. I saw it from the carpark of - appropriately enough - Virgin Active.

The plane could have been on training flights out of Nottingham / East Midlands, as I know VS use that airport for training due to the long runway (have VS recently taken delivery of another A340-600 that has yet to enter service?) Judging by the direction the plane was coming from & it's very low altitude, I am guessing it had done low fly-by over the Rolls Royce factories where it's engines originated from.

[Neil]

G-VYOU is due to enter the fleet sometime soon so could of been her?

I believe it was a A340-300, not sure on reg.

It was G-VFAR which was on training exercises out of EMA. You probably saw it on route back to LHR as it got back there at around 17.00.

I've seen Virgin plane/s practising their landing/take offs at Nottingham East Midlands Airport quite a few times over the past few weeks. The first time I was travelling along the M1 and it was landing what felt like a few feet above me - I was SOOO excited! It's fab to see Virgin planes at the airport... I wish they'd fly with passengers from here!

U2fan

i thought virgin only took experienced pilots. i didnt think they hired trainees

Originally posted by tosh_5
i thought virgin only took experienced pilots. i didnt think they hired trainees

They don't hire "trainees" - they are looking for pilots with over 2500 hours flying time, multi-crew (and hopefully jet) experience, but even experienced commercial pilots have to be "type rated" - that is that they have had certain training on the aircraft they will fly, about it's systems, how it might differ from aircraft they are more used to flying/have flown previously, and how to deal with various situations and emergencies on that aircraft.

In addition, a pilot has to be "recent" on the aircraft type - "recency" consists of a certain number of takeoffs and landings within a specific period.

For pilots with long haul carriers, maintaining recency can be very difficult, as you do far fewer takeoffs and landings per duty period than a short haul crew.

This is especially so if you are the "Second Officer" or "Supernumary First Officer" - the third (and sometimes fourth) pilot airlines carry for particularly long duty sectors. This "third man" may not actually get a takeoff or landing at all on such a trip.

(This is another reason that SQ fly intra-Asia sectors with their A340-500s - if the fleet did Ultra Long Haul only, it would be a nightmare for crew recency.)

The flight could have been to train already experienced pilots about the A340, or it could have to keep existing pilots recent, especially if some pilots didn't get a flight due to all the disruption last week and went "out of recency".

HTH.

Cheers,
Mike

thanks for that mike.