So very true. This photo is indeed the activity one should see on the flight deck. Real and unrehearsed. Not photos of shipmates marching around in formation and standing at parade rest. To me an old salt with years on the roof under my belt..those"old" CV-16 photos looked well ridiculous...such as;
..To me these photos
were staged..some what. Perhaps because they were new at what they were doing on that flight deck.. Just my opinion. The PLAN CV programme is coming along..slowly but surely.
Not necessarily.
You have to remember that the Liaoning is primarily a training and testing carrier.
At the time those photos were taken, it was most certainly not yet operational.
My guess is that it was after they have completed testing, training and qualification for the first batch of pilots and deck hands, who then became instructors so they can rapidly train up more personal to bring the ship closer to operational status.
As such, I think the above was a classroom practical.
Notice how all the extra personnel were red shirts, and how one of them was up on the aircraft. Also notice how the aircraft was locked down nice and tight and not in a launch position - so they were not really prep'ing it for a sortie (although they probably went through all the steps as if they were, including engine start and preflight checks, hence all the precautions - you can even seen the heat distortions from the engines in second picture).
My guess is it was a red shirt instructor doing a live practical walk through of some of the duties involved for newbies (do you also call new deckhands greenhorns, or is that just for pilots?).
After he was done, the class files back, probably literally back to a classroom to consolidate on what they just learnt, with a few blue shirts as escort - which would be unnecessary if everyone was already trained up and qualified.
In my view, if it was a purely staged PR photoshoot, the camera crew would be far closer to the action, and they would not turn the engines on for something like that.
The PLA might be more tolerant of PR people using their people and hardware as props, but I seriously doubt they would waste resources like fuel and take safety risks just for a photoshoot.
It would be fine to pose with the hardware, but actually turning stuff on and the like would be out of bounds in my view.
