jeff64 wrote:
The BEA seems to consider that every time a flight instructor is in the right seat, he is acting as instructor, and he is PIC.
Is that from this report or something else?
From this report, I would have concluded that they said the RH pilot had to be PIC, because the flight was partly IFR, and only one pilot was qualified for such flight, him.
Maybe off topic, but how does the responsibility of the instructor (PIC) change when the other pilot is “Pilot” or “Student under supervision”?
The BEA seems to consider that every time a flight instructor is in the right seat, he is acting as instructor, and he is PIC.
That’s totally bizzare, because it makes every flight with an “FI” in the RHS illegal unless the insurance covers instruction, and covers that specific instructional scenario. It also requires that the “FI” is legal to be PIC on the aircraft. That is completely mad.
Is this for an F-reg or for any aircraft in French airspace? I have certainly flown in French airspace with more than one “FI” in the RHS. One a DGAC FI and several FAA CFI/CFIIs, and probably several others. In nearly all cases they were passengers.
There is, IIRC, a rule in the UK in that in a G-reg the (RHS) FI is always PIC but that applies only to definite and agreed instructional flights. It doesn’t apply to a RHS passenger who happens to be an FI; that would be crazy. It does mean that the LHS cannot log the flight as PIC even if he could legally be PIC if flying alone. In the FAA system, for example, a LHS IR student can log the training as PIC so long as the actual flight conditions are VFR, which they usually are during training.
Ultimately, this debate means little with respect to this accident, but it may affect who gets (or doesn’t get) the insurance payout. Obviously, if “somebody decides” that the PIC was X and X was not insured, all hell will break loose, and the guy’s family will sue Stefan’s estate and probably clean it out. They will “do a Graham Hill” on it.
The pilot in the LH seat was not rated IFR yet a long part of the flight was IFR. Therefore, the French rightly conclude that it was a training flight and the FI was PIC. I don’t see them changing the roles in the VFR part, particularly in this situation.
Another thing stranger in the report, is it begins that way :
“Le pilote, accompagné d’un passager, décolle sous plan de vol IFR de l’aérodrome de Dortmund (Allemagne)”
Translation : the pilot accompanied by a passenger, takes off under IFR flight plan from Dortmund airfield.
In the head section of the report it is also written : Persons on board : Pilot and one passenger.
At no other place they refer to this passenger as a student.
Noe wrote:
You mean he was legally PIC but they might have agreed that the other person would act as PIC?
Stefan’s name was given as PIC in the flight plan’s item 19 because he just used his profile on autorouter and filed the plan. Easy for somebody that owns the aircraft and is familiar. This does not mean that he considered himself to be PIC during this flight. Maybe he was just passenger, maybe he took certain tasks (such as radio) or maybe he was actually flying the aircraft from the RHS although that would be highly unusual for a German pilot. My guess is that the other guy was PIC and Stefan merely filed the flight plan.
Emir wrote:
KLN94 and KMD550? Isn’t this sufficient if you file IFR plan with IFR departure and the idea to descend on ILS and cancel IFR once you’re visual?
I don’t think one would do without a good moving map in this area. They did not find a second tablet and also did not elaborate on whether there could have been one. There’s a good chance the other guy was running a moving map on his tablet.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I don’t see them changing the roles in the VFR part
that’s the problem with the dual commands.
You can legally switch roles in flights.
One day, an helicopter instructor and commercial pilot told me than, outside instruction time, it removed the dual commands of his aircraft to prevent this question in case of an accident.
achimha wrote:
Stefan’s name was given as PIC in the flight plan’s item 19 because he just used his profile on autorouter and filed the plan.
It was probably more than convenience, as the other pilot wasn’t rated to be PIC for that flight
Noe wrote:
It was probably more than convenience, as the other pilot wasn’t rated to be PIC for that flight
Le passager, également pilote, titulaire d’une licence de pilote privé, totalisait
1 250 heures de vol, et selon les témoignages recueillis, volait régulièrement sur TB20.
This is the only thing I could find, it doesn’t directly say that the “passenger” did not have an IR. I do not know him personally but that should be possible to find out.
The pilot in the LH seat was not rated IFR yet a long part of the flight was IFR. Therefore, the French rightly conclude that it was a training flight and the FI was PIC. I don’t see them changing the roles in the VFR part, particularly in this situation.
I don’t think so because AFAIK Stefan was not an IRI. So while the VFR part could have been an instructional flight, the main part could not. And there are very rare scenarios where freelance training (VFR or IFR) is allowed… VFR is a bit easier to assume because it could be a PPL reval flight. IFR is really stretching it, even with an IRI.
