The demonstration flight will take off from HARS Aviation Museum at Shellharbour Airport at 10:30am on Friday. The plane, dubbed the largest “close replica” aircraft in the world, has been restored by HARS over more than 12 years since the society purchased it in 2010.

The grounding, which affects an unspecified number of Defence’s Spartan aircraft, comes after the US Coast Guard suspended use of all 14 of its Spartans, finding that each had cracks of “varying degrees” and saying they would remain grounded until a “thorough evaluation” was completed.

Airservices’ Melbourne ARFF Training Academy took out a platinum award for Best in Virtual Reality at the LearnX Awards for its use of XVR Simulation training software during firefighting training workshops.

The rainbow livery has been added to the nine-year-old A320-200 VH-VFY, which returned to Jetstar’s domestic network on Wednesday after its repainting in the airline’s Melbourne engineering hangar.

The airline has selected the conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) version of the ALIA battery-electric aircraft for its fleet, with the first expected to be in service for cargo flights with NZ Post by 2026. Air New Zealand has a firm order for one ALIA, with options for an extra two and rights for a further 20.

Bonza has already axed all Gold Coast–Darwin flights for December, with the route to now launch on 2 January. Other Gold Coast routes, including Melbourne’s Avalon Airport and Cairns, have been delayed indefinitely while CASA’s approval process continues for its wet-lease agreement with Flair.