QF6012 - A380 taking off & then landing in Sydney - what's this?

[Forg]

On Saturday morning, maybe an hour after we'd seen an SQ A380 coming into Sydney, my wife pointed-out another A380 off in the distance joining the usual landing approach from an unusual direction ... she said "hey there's one going in a circle" (to which I thought "yeah nah") & as it got closer the white fuselage & red tail showed it to be QF.

Intrigued as to where QF might be coming from in the middle of a Saturday with an A380, I had a squiz on FlightRadar24 ... the flight was QF6012, it had origin Sydney and was heading towards ... Sydney. The flight map was just a big loop, and the flight was something like 15 minutes. I went looking for a QF6012 via Google, and found flights in the past (and all of which would be using smaller aircraft - like AKL-MEL) ... this didn't seem to be on their schedule.

Any clue on what this would be? Commissioning a newly refurb'd aircraft, quick flight test? Training a new crew? It would seem a fairly expensive exercise, taking off & then landing at Kingsford-Smith, the maintenance & fuel & crew & fees you'd need to do that ... ?

 

[oz_mark]

Could be post maintenance, or a crew check.

 

[GrahamBRI]

or a crew check.

Let’s hope it was a crew check and they have finally discovered that the crew are not serving champagne on boarding anymore and they came back to fix things

 

[samh004]

Could be post maintenance, or a crew check.

Can't imagine the bill in terms of crew hours, landing fees, fuel... for 15 minutes (or so) of A380 air time!!

 

[Quickstatus]

Can't imagine the bill

Any clue on what this would be? Commissioning a newly refurb'd aircraft, quick flight test? Training a new crew? It would seem a fairly expensive exercise, taking off & then landing at Kingsford-Smith, the maintenance & fuel & crew & fees you'd need to do that ... ?

Why the concern about cost?. QF operates these aircraft to maintenance facilities as far as Dresden, Dubai and Manila without carrying passengers. The cost hardly the same as a maintenance flight empty of passengers to DRS and back.
Likely some sort of a check. Maybe aircraft maintenance check or pilot check
Checks are good

The aircraft is VH-OQJ
There were actually 2 flights. Both about 1.5hrs
QF6011 then an hour later QF6012
A few hrs after that, it operated QF1 to SIN/LHR

Prior to these 2 flights it has been operating between LAX and SYD - arrived as QF12 the day prior to these check flights.

Checks are good

 

[oz_mark]

Can't imagine the bill in terms of crew hours, landing fees, fuel... for 15 minutes (or so) of A380 air time!!

Individually, probably a large cost, but in the scheme of things in running the A380 fleet, probably not much.

 

[jb747]

There are virtually no maintenance check flights these days, unless it's after very major maintenance. All of these flights that have been happening over the past few months are for pilot recertification. Each Captain and FO, will do two of these. Yes, it probably costs a motza, but someone who shall remain nameless, made the decision to let all of the pilot currency lapse.