As one of those involved in establishing the training organisation here at V, I was fortunate to be the Captain of the first operational Sydney to Los Angeles service – the Inaugural Launch Service.
Well, it’s now seriously Pre-Game. It seems most of V is across at Cockatoo Island at the Launch Party, while the rest of us prepare to Launch tomorrow afternoon.
I still can’t quite believe it’s about to all come true, but I logged into SABRE again today and I’m still on the flight. In the last few days I’ve run into Marty, Tony and Brad and they’re all pretty cool customers (well Marty isn’t but that’s not surprising).
Mike – Would you seriously put this man in charge of a multi million dollar aircraft on perhaps the most important flight of a fledgling airline’s operational history? Hmmm.
As exciting and unique as it all is – life goes on. This week we’ve published the Line Training Syllabus for both Primary and Relief Crew, I’ve done sim sessions Wednesday and Thursday, I’m trying to finish off the OPT user guide, and Brisbane want the sim training recurrency form incorporated in the individual sim forms, rather than as a separate form. Last night I was up til late doing all of the Virginetics exams that I’ve been putting off, working through the content on one screen, exam on the other. Ugh.
The good news is that I’ve managed to get my wife Meg on the flight with me tomorrow (albeit in economy). Apart from anything else – this means far less work is going to be done in LA than might otherwise have been achieved, which is probably a good thing!
During the last of the Line Training flights last week one of the Cabin Crew who is coming with us tomorrow told me that crew had been advised they were not invited to the Launch Party in LAX Friday night after we arrived. While disappointed, I decided that therefore we would have to have our own launch party and started some research.
One of the advantages of having been on the delivery flight is I made a few contacts, so got in contact with my secret contact in PR to ascertain the truth of the matter (always a good idea to verify such rumours).
My secret contact has arranged for us to attend the LAX party Friday night in uniform to act as an honour guard for the arriving guests (thereby justifying our presence – I’ve been made to promise not to wear my Indiana Jones hat) after which we are free to shed our trapppings of duty and join in the fun. I’ve promised in return a photo shoot in the nacelle of the aircraft at some point …
Tomorrow will be the result of a lot of work of a lot of good people – most of whom I’ve not met. We’ll all do our part to make it a success, I’m sure.
More from LAX!
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