This seeems also to indicate that a TRI, TRE should not be qualified to carry out flights on the backside (Slow Flight)of the flight envelope.
""""In addition, no documents detail the CONSTRAINTS to be imposed on these FLIGHTS or SKILLS required of the pilots"""""""".
..and that there is no requirement to have the training or the skills to face such situations...
""In the context of their agreement, Air New Zealand and XL Airways Germany had agreed on a programme of in-flight checks based on an Airbus programme used for flights intended for the delivery (acceptance) of a new airplane to a client.
THESE FLIGHTS ARE PERFORMED BY AIRBUS ACCEPTANCE PILOTS AND ENGINEERS".
OK, guys, let's write it in a clear manner. TRI/TRE, which are regarded as the highest positions in our industry, simply usually don't have the qualifications to perform those flights - which 90% of the airlines in various countries call "test flights", to look nicer and to make their pilots believe they are Test Pilots...
In some countries, you will never find this terminology - but instead check flights, acceptance flights, post-maintenance flights, and so on... does it look pedantic ? well, as much as pilots doing air displays when they have no training, or landing in bad visibility without the appropriate ratings...
The SETP (Society of Experimental Test Pilots) - an american body - specifically excludes membership from pilots who have been doing only maintenance flights...
A Test Pilot course, from one of the recognised schools in the world, takes about one year and half to complete - with grades, quoting and possible failure at the end of it, without getting the diploma - and usually candidates must already have an extensive background of flying, and be University graduates (not engineers please, Graduate Engineers if you prefer)
There has already been a semantic upgrade in Europe 10 years ago, with Acceptance Pilots becoming Test Pilots, and Test Pilots becoming Experimental Test Pilots - but not in any case in some countries would you allow
autopilots operators, upgraded to SOPs and FMC instructors which is what TRI/TREs are to operate in flights with such unusual conditions as low speeds, extreme manoeuvres or configurations (well, extreme for the human material usually found in airlines cockpits)
That might sound as Top Gun ego, or territorial defence, with everybody laughing at it... well, until a story like the Perpignan one, with an aircraft in the water and the loss of all crew on board, doing things they should never have been doing (low speed part of the flight in a rush, halfway in the clouds, at the beginning of an IR procedure, and with 3000 to 2000 ft only below
and using a flight plan, area and associated ATC support unappropriate for the event.... yes, it's a job.
In a big company of my friends, one of the above-metioned TP schools has cheapened itself by coming and showing videos
for two days about what their customers will call "test flying" What would you do for money... ? Test flying for dummies...
Please don't come back with the stories of A330 in Toulouse or BAC I-II in UK in the sixties, or other prototypes crashes in the history of real Test Flying - those were documented flights, with inherent part of risk accepted from the beginning by the crew and the industry...