groundfloor:
Airbus has several different documents, for the customer acceptance flight it is called the CAM, Customer Acceptance Manual and it is a much simplified version of the PATM, Production Aircraft Test Manual; which is used for the tests out of the assembly line, including the first flight, and yes the first flight is ususaly 3 SOB 2 pilots from EV(Flight Test) and a FTE (Flight Test Engineer). This first flight takes about 3 HRS.
It is a challenging and very fluid sequence of tests, but the crews do it often and are very familiar with the sequence and each particular test, it is designed to be continious either as a local flight or as a ferry between Toulouse and Finky. The most time consuming is the performance part, to verify and document the parameters for the customer, during this flight, the RVSM certification is also verified and activated.
My opinion is that this task should be left to people with experience doing it, a Line Capt, TRI or TRE is not qualified nor should be put in a situation he/she is not completely familiar with, specially when something does not go as expected; pilots that do it all the time will know what to expect and recognize an anomality immediately; also the FTE is an essential part of the team, conducting an acceptance flight without an experinced FTE is worthless.
G
Last edited by guiones; 30th May 2009 at 22:14.