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ANA completes the first test flight to Hawaii with its new Airbus A380
ANA (All Nippon Airways) successfully operated its first test flight of its first Airbus A380 to Hawaii. (worldairlinenews.com) More...
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Why would ANA do such a long test flight? Wouldn't they do something like Haneda-Osaka for the first month to test out the airplane? Tokyo-Honolulu seems like overkill.
They have been flying this plane from Narita - Osaka for the last 2 weeks.
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/JA381A/history/20190406/0012Z/RJAA/RJBB
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/JA381A/history/20190406/0012Z/RJAA/RJBB
It's a long distance try out. What's the point of doing 135km flight?
Not just that, but they are doing route proving. They need to perform the actual flights that they want to carry passengers on.
Part of the test included the landing, unloading turnaround, servicing, loading, and takeoff from *Hawaii*. Kinda hard to do all that on a local flight in Japan.
Most of the time when an airline gets a new plane, they do shorter runs to get the kinks out. I remember when AF took delivery of their A380 they flew CDG-LHR for about a month before deploying it on their long-haul routes. I remember taking a B787 on UAL from LAX-IAH for the same reason.
