Late last week, I spent a couple of full days working in the sky… Flying between Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Perth in a Virgin Blue Boeing 737-700 doing private test flights. I was testing out the new “Lve 2 Air” service, which puts 24 channels of live FOXTEL (pay TV) on seat-backs on Virgin Blue planes, using a special satellite tracking antenna attached to the top of the plane. It works great, a few issues, but they should be sorted out quickly, it’s a very enjoyable way to pass the time, it’s a $6 credit card swipe.
It was a fun couple of days work, watching live TV in the sky, with friendly flight crew laying on the food/drink, and a nice stop-over hotel/dinner/breakfast in Melbourne. On the flights we got an entire row of seats across the aircraft to ourselves (you never see that these days!), and we were asked to monitor channels for any issues. I also got to spend 30 minutes in the cockpit chatting to one of the pilots during our track across to Perth, learning what all the control panel’s buttons, switches, and screens are used for, not something you have the chance to do at all these days, a great experience. If I had been quicker off the mark I might have been able to secure the jump-seat for a take off or landing. The aborted landings in Brisbane and Adelaide were quite exciting, coming in to land, then rapidly ascending into the sky seconds before touch down. I got to spend a whole 8 minutes in Perth at the airport terminal, while the plane refueled, so I didn’t really get to ‘visit’ anywhere, apart from a night in Melbourne at an airport hotel.
