Originally Posted by
parabellum
an acceptance flight first though and then a trip out of USA airspace where the final agreement of sale was signed, thus avoiding USA sales tax/duty!!!
It is common for new Boeing aircraft to make a quick trip up to Canada (Abbotsford is a favourite) and back to overcome this tax issue.
The same thing afflicts other large purchases in the USA. General Motors railway locomotives built in Chicago, Illinois were driven from the factory to Iowa to be handed over to railway companies headquartered in Illinoins (quite a number of them), and then driven back.
VAT in Europe works in a different way so not an issue for Airbus.
Regarding delivery flights apparently John Cunningham, long-term chief test pilot at de Havilland/Hawker Siddeley, did many of the delivery flights of the Trident to China in the 1970s himself.
ETOPS is not an issue for such flights nowadays as they are not public transport flights and there are no passengers. It is common for aircraft like the DHC-8 to deliver from Canada across the Pacific, extra fuel tanks are fitted inside the cabin if required. In earlier times this was not possible; aircraft like the Convair 240 which were delivered to US airlines in Hawaii in the 1950s could not make the single hop across the Pacific and went the long way round through Europe and Asia, shorter legs but lots of them.