A police commissioner has shouldered the blame for an interstate helicopter trip after a respected retired detective declared it risked significant ramifications.
Victoria Police Commissioner Mike Bush has apologised for using a force chopper to travel from Melbourne to Hobart on Monday for a meeting with his counterparts from New Zealand and around Australia.
A trip on a commercial airline between the two cities takes about an hour and there are about a dozen flights a day.
Mr Bush conceded the decision was wrong and said the "buck stops with me".
The Kiwi insisted the trip on a back-up chopper used for training did not risk public safety or burden taxpayers with extra operating costs, but admitted his reasons for taking it "don't stack".
"This doesn't pass the pub test and I'm particularly concerned about what the public think of the Victoria Police," he told reporters in Hobart.
"The public has got to trust us to make the right decisions. This wasn't one of them."
The force's helicopters are leased with a set number of hours paid for each month under the agreement.
"It would have been quite significant should a major incident have occurred and they were one chopper down," the ex-senior sergeant told AAP.
"Touch wood, things went well, but I think it's a huge lesson that Mike Bush has learned."
The commissioner's flight would not lead to the threshold being breached, police said.
Victoria Police also has a fixed-wing aircraft but that plane was "deemed unviable due to strong winds in Tasmania" on Monday.
Mr Bush vowed it would never happen again, though he said there would no change to protocols.
With the chopper leaving Hobart on Tuesday afternoon after a mechanical issue kept it overnight, Mr Bush was expected to board a commercial flight to return to Melbourne on Wednesday evening.
It was always his intention to catch a commercial flight home, he said.
Retired Victoria Police homicide detective Charlie Bezzina said he had never heard of a senior officer using a police helicopter in that way.
Mr Bezzina said multiple such aircraft were needed during major incidents, including for rescues or to respond to possible sightings of wanted alleged police killer Dezi Freeman in northern Victoria.
"So not a good position to be in when you've depleted so significant a resource," he said.
Victorian Opposition Leader Brad Battin described it as a "bad look".
"What would you say to the victims if that helicopter was unavailable when it was needed most to fight crime," he said.
Tasmanian Liberal senator Jonathon Duniam said it was a "straightforward process" to fly commercially between Hobart and Melbourne.
"Having flown here just today, I didn't find it too arduous," he said in the Victorian capital.
Senior Victorian minister Harriet Shing said the state Labor government supported Mr Bush and stressed the trip was within the existing helicopter budget.
"The police commissioner is doing an exceptional job, we back him," she said.
Mr Bush was in Hobart for the Australian and New Zealand Police Commissioners Forum.
Two staff and New Zealand Police Commissioner Richard Chambers joined him on the helicopter flight as Mr Chambers had earlier attended the same counter-terrorism conference in Melbourne.
It's the first public misstep by the chief commissioner since taking on the job in June after Shane Patton resigned following a no-confidence vote in his leadership from officers in the police union, linked to an 18-month pay dispute.
