Angel Flight Command Pilot...and an overall great flying day today

"Michael" wrote in message
oups.com...
I'm always somewhat sceptical when I hear something like that. This
person is flying around NOW without an instructor. How is he not
bending the airplane?

Having been in an airplane with pilots like that, I can tell you that your
skepticism is unfounded.

These people are flying around NOW without an instructor because they have
not pushed the situation past the boundary between "no accident" and
"accident". But that doesn't mean that they are a safe pilot. I personally
have mishandled an airplane often enough to understand that there's a LOT of
room for error, if you are normally flying reasonably well. Even if you
really suck as a pilot, there's still a little bit of room for error.

An unqualified pilot can manage to fly for quite some time, continually
mishandling the airplane very badly, and as long as luck and conditions
(weather, traffic, etc) stay on their side, no reportable accident occurs.
But that doesn't mean they are safe, and it doesn't mean you want them
representing your organization. Eventually, the situation will not be
favorable, and their mishandling of the airplane will result in an accident.
The chances of this happening are significantly greater with this kind of
unqualified pilot than they are with a qualified pilot. Orders of magnitude
greater, IMHO.

What's different about THIS flight that required
intervention? Is it more likely that the instructor simply
over-reacted? Or that by his presence as an instructor he encouraged
the pilot to proceed into a bad situation where the pilot would
otherwise have bailed out sooner?

All of your hypotheses are valid. But that isn't the same as saying that
they are correct, nor is it the same as saying that a checkride cannot
remove pilots from the operation that one does not want involved. The fact
is that there are pilots out there flying that shouldn't be. An
organization who wants to take steps to avoid having those pilots flying for
*them* has every right to do so, and it is not necessarily true that
attempting to do so is fruitless, or eliminates more good pilots than bad.

[...]
There are many things wrong with the FAA, but at least it does one
thing right - it waits for accidents before making rules. Others would
be well advised to follow a similar philosophy.

Frankly, in a perfect world I'd agree with you there. But the FAA is quite
different from a civilian organization. In particular, the odds of a
successful lawsuit are significantly higher against the civilian
organization than against the FAA. I don't know that this is the motivation
of the particular policy in question, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
The fear of litigation is the reason for a huge amount of preventative
action, effective or otherwise. Your philosophy only works in a society
where a single lawsuit cannot completely obliterate a corporation,
non-profit, household, etc. We don't live in that kind of society.

Pete