You gets what you pay for.

 

More bluster.

Perhaps I can relate a little story to you which may shed some light on why we don't voluntarily do idiotic crap for maint.

Ten years ago I was a relatively new hire on the 67 fleet. I was bumped from the 27 after they were parked. As a reserve maggot I got to fly a lot of junk that other guys didn't want to do.

Deadheaded to TPA to fly a maintenance verification flight. The plane had been there for days with a dicked up slat. While standing in ops the guy behind the counter tells me that we are going to take the plane up, and if still dicked up, we will fly it to MIA. "Sure, whatever" is my reply. I had been a long time commuter maggot and we did this type of crap all the time.

The Captain shows up and I tell him what's up. He looks at me and says, "No, we're not" and asks me to go and grab my FOM. He then walks over and tells the ops guy that we're not taking that plane to MIA. OPS guy is pi$$ed and cops an attitude.

Captain refers me to the maint chap and asks me to read exactly what we were authorized to do under the auspices of the FOM, and the specific flight / release we had been issued.

It clearly forbade us from doing anything outside "normal ops" with the plane. It also forbade us from turning a maintenance verification flight into a maintenance ferry flight.

So....there ya go.

There are usually specific reasons why pilots don't do certain crap with the plane. And there is plenty of uninformed opinion, bit@hing and hand wringing when we don't.

I will not risk my life or license for UAL.

 

I used to fly for ATI. We had three guys killed attempting a three engine take off for a maintenance ferry. I've done gear down ferry flights, non pressurized ferry flights maintenance verification and test flights for other companies.

It's just not worth it to me. There are more than a fair share of crashes due to the unusual stuff that happens on these flights and lets face it other than the sim once a year we NEVER get to practice this stuff in real life. How often have any of you guys taken an airliner to the shaker or auto throttle wake up or alpha lock? Hopefully never.

The engineering guys are an asset plain and simple. They should have an ALPA number and a seniority number.

 

A good chunk of the pilot group has experience doing those or similar things as post maintenance check flight pilots. Yes, it's a PITA and would require a specific qual and training, but there are plenty of pilots on our list who have experience doing similar flights, and some would do it again if the price was right.

Exactly.