Originally Posted by
SpeedBird17Victor
I think it's more the case of getting familiar flying it long-distance, over areas with little/no radio communications, alternate airports etc....
Sure, you can fly for 10 hours over the USA, but, you might as well make it even more realistic and "challenging", flying where diversion airports are Less than or equal to 180Mins away, with no Air traffic centres to "report" to...
You have to imagine that there are a number of factors that go into determining the routing of these test flights that we can only guess at. There almost certainly are regulatory requirements to be complied with. Plus, if the 787 is ultimately going to be used to service LHR, you can imagine that AA wants the LHR ground crew and gate staff to have some familiarity with the aircraft.