RV 4-ship into Sydney International

[newt]

The Australian state of New South Wales rolled-back their stay-at-home order for COVID-19 on Friday, so it's the first time we've been able to get out and fly airplanes in two months.

With the airlines all but shut down, there are suddenly a lot of idle arrival and departure slots at Sydney International. What better way to celebrate the relinquishment of the lockdown than by using one of them?

Eddie Seve spent several weeks doing the legwork to organize it, coordinating with ATC, Sydney Airport Corporation's media unit, and the slot admin people at Airport Coordination Australia. Glad I didn't have his job.

The result was a departure from Wedderburn in the South of Sydney, receipt of a clearance from Sydney Centre to climb to 3000 in Sydney's class C, then handoffs through Sydney Approach, Director, and Tower for a visual approach to runway 16R at YSSY.





We'd pre-arranged with the media unit to do our touchdown in right finger-four between the PAPI and taxiway F. I think it's the first time we've used a runway wide enough to carry four RVs in a simultaneous formation landing; That's a lot of pavement.





... continued ...

[newt]

We spent nearly an hour in parking bay 71 doing interviews and a photo shoot with the media unit, taking selfies, and marvelling at the fact that we're the first formation of EAB aircraft to ever land at Sydney. One of the ground workers posted a video of our landing to facebook, then said he'd tried to organize a formation of 3 Robins a few days earlier and been refused...













Having finished what we set out to do, we saddled-up, taxied on A past all the parked 747's to holding point F, lined up, and departed 16R. Tower said, "Very impressive," as they passed us off to Departures on climbout.





Great thanks to Kurt and Fiona from the media unit, Jennifer from Airport Coordination Australia, and everyone from Air Services Australia who helped out.



And massive thanks to Eddie, who we appointed as our formation team leader for 2020, who's clearly been doing a great job.

- mark

(photo credits: Anne-Marie Seve, Kevin White)

[newt]

As a final post-script:

Taking a 4-ship formation into Sydney Airport was utterly ridiculous, completely unnecessary, a dead-set senseless thing to do. And I?m so glad we did it

Social distancing is important, no aircraft were less than 1.5m from each other.

- mark

[eddieseve]

What an awesome way to spend a Sunday, just think we probably spent more time on the ground then we did for our arrival and departure.

Cheers

[GeoffP]

Great Stuff guys! Would've been a blast, and well worth the paperwork effort. I'm sure it was a welcome distraction for the airport staff too.

[whitek2h]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He3fPa7Zmt0&t=9s

Video pretty much covers the entire flight from Wedderburn (SW Sydney) to Sydney International with all the ATC radio included.

Cheers Kevin
RV6A

[RV10inOz]

An outstanding effort guys, very well done indeed.

BZ

DB

[dreed]

Love it! Well done gents!

[newt]

Kevin made another video. Departure from Sydney with ATC audio. Extra bonus wake turbulence on late final (it slammed me ten seconds later too, dammit)

https://youtu.be/um0DQi3eBp8

- mark

[jfogarty]

You guys did a great job, thanks for sharing.