BeechBaby wrote:
And that makes you feel nice and safe does it? Sorry, I feel you may have totally missed the point of the discussion
What on earth do you mean by that comment?
I replied to your claim that “All aircraft must be, have to be, maintained in accordance with the manufacturers schedule.”
Or did you mean “should be” rather than “must be”. Then you should have written that!
Peter wrote:
That “RHS filler with an IR” practice is common in GA and usually illegal because the RHS occupant is not insured to be PIC.
Do you mean that the insurance usually won’t be valid if the (non-instructor) PIC sits in the right-hand seat or that the insurance usually won’t be valid with the particular right-hand seat person as PIC?
What I think he’s getting at (and so am I) is that what’s written on paper as maintenance requirements in GA has little bearing on what’s actually done.
Lots of GA maintenance work (perhaps a majority) is pencil-whipped to some degree or other.
I don’t know about you, but when I choose to get into a GA aircraft the only thing that matters is my own judgement on the apparent state of the aircraft and the gut feeling I get from the pilot/operator and the general environment in which I find it. The fact that it may or may not be maintained professionally, in accordance with some set of regulations or other, counts for absolutely nothing.
As I said before, the aircraft I fear the most is one which the professionals have just been crawling all over. Ideally I prefer one which has proven itself in a few hours of flight since the professionals touched it.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Do you mean that the insurance usually won’t be valid if the (non-instructor) PIC sits in the right-hand seat or that the insurance usually won’t be valid with the particular right-hand seat person as PIC?
In the particular case I was describing I think he means the latter, but I would have been insured as PIC as a club member meeting the recency requirements. The question was more one of who was really PIC.
Let’s not get into the old debate of whether a non-instructor PIC is allowed to sit in the other seat.
Graham wrote:
Let’s not get into the old debate of whether a non-instructor PIC is allowed to sit in the other seat.
There is no debate. Unless specifically prohibited by the POH or impossible to fly the aircraft from the RHS (think Bonanza, Baron throwover yoke), perfectly legal.
Ooops, sorry – I just restarted the debate , LOL !
Do you mean that the insurance usually won’t be valid if the (non-instructor) PIC sits in the right-hand seat or that the insurance usually won’t be valid with the particular right-hand seat person as PIC?
As an owner you generally have two options with insurance
The latter costs very roughly 3x more than the former, because anybody with a PPL and the diff signoff can jump in.
In a school (“club” in the right countries 
) context there are additional dimensions e.g. any PIC needs to be a member of the school/club, or a member of some GA body (in France?) and/or be authorised by an FI. Dire things happen if an FI didn’t authorise somebody who flew as PIC. And dire things can happen to the FI who took somebody up who, it is later discovered, wasn’t a member on the day (in cases where membership is required)…
Lots of other angles e.g. with an N-reg the trust needs to be a named party, and if you go up with an FI then he may well want the school to be a named party even if your insurance includes training (as they usually do); I had this with Cabair when I did just 1 flight with an employee of theirs who was an FAA CFI (long story).
A named party cannot be gone after by the insurer for the recovery of a payout.
Lots of GA maintenance work (perhaps a majority) is pencil-whipped to some degree or other.
Especially under the huge pressure of a large customer of the maintenance company. This is why school planes tend to be in a really bad condition. I could post some examples but obviously I won’t
Airborne_Again wrote:
What on earth do you mean by that comment?
OK, @graham got it. I am also aware that this is slightly off thread topic so I will not dwell. Where do you think LAMP, PartM, Part ML, pilot prepared schedules etc etc come from, ie have their core, their baseline?
Graham wrote:
What I think he’s getting at (and so am I) is that what’s written on paper as maintenance requirements in GA has little bearing on what’s actually done.
The ‘must be’ is the clue.
Graham wrote:
The fact that it may or may not be maintained professionally, in accordance with some set of regulations or other, counts for absolutely nothing.
Exactly. And a bit deeper I watch in wonder as AOC pilots, professionally trained remember 
pitch up to a hanger with an exploded bag of nuts and bolts strewn over the floor, and get into their professionally maintained decrepit twin and fly away. Just And yet they are all accredited.
Peter wrote:
As an owner you generally have two options with insurance named pilot(s) “club use” (or whatever the name)The latter costs very roughly 3x more than the former, because anybody with a PPL and the diff signoff can jump in.
Is that a UK thing? It certainly is not the case here in the US, although it depends to a degree on the club setup (checkout, recency requirements).
172driver wrote:
It certainly is not the case here in the US
My US aircraft policy covers me as pilot and “any person who has your permission and has a current and valid FAA Private, Commercial, or ATP pilot certificate with ratings and endorsements applicable to your aircraft”. No other requirements, time in type, transition training etc. are required and I was not offered a policy with less coverage. I paid $869 this year from AIG.
My US aircraft policy covers me as pilot and “any person who has your permission
That seems unusual. The common thing is an “open pilot” clause which covers anyone with sufficient experience. For my 182, iirc it was 500 hrs total, 100 hrs retract, IR and 10 hours in type. Something like that anyway. In practice there aren’t THAT many people with TR182 experience, so it wasn’t very useful.
I did manage to get my CFI as a named pilot, for <$100, which he insisted on – he was very concerned about subrogation. But that was a bit farcical – at one point they asked him for number of hours in a 1980 TR182! I did talk them out of that though.
