Originally Posted by
PilotPieces
If a customer isnt charged for a transit, and no work is undertaken on the transit, then im hoping that I could fly it and log it, however, there may not be a landing involved to clearly define it in the eyes of the CAA.
Which I think answers the question. The flight is clearly aerial work, there is a customer who is being charged for the survey and the survey is the purpose of the flight. The part of the flight getting to the survey and back is directly related to the purpose (much as taking off and landing would be!).
If they were separate flights, it is quite reasonable to conduct the positioning flights as private flights (and I believe many AOC holders do this to take advantage of the greater flexibility of private ops).