Flying over the runway is illegal?

Andrew Sarangan wrote:
I could see flyovers being illegal under two FARs - minimum safe
altitude, as well as careless and reckless. Regardless of legality,
they are totally unnecessary and unsafe. The outcome of this flight
demonstrates that point.

Minimum safe altitude is that altitude necessary to ensure being able
to glide to a safe landing in the event of a power failure. One may
presume that when over a runway you ought to be able to reach the
thing. The 500' altitude requirement that some have been throwing
around here has nothing to do with minimum safe altitude.

You are required to practice missed approaches as a student pilot,
which is essentially a flyover. You are also required to demonstrate
the ability to glide to a safe landing. ATC may even require you to fly
over the runway at a low altitude. Much of student pilot training is
devoted to teaching students to fly over runways at low altitude
safely. During instrument training or in IMC the pilot may fly a
circling approach as low as 500' over the runway and in fact may fly
almost a whole pattern at that altitude, and he may descend lower than
that under some conditions.

John and Martha King demonstrate in some of their videos a very low
pass over the runway in ground effect as a training device and they
recommend that instructors do this with their students. The Kings are
not notoriously dangerous pilots, nor are they given to recommending
that pilots break the FARs.

The pilot in this case is said to have stalled, but given the
inaccuracies in the news article and the fact that the investigation
had barely begun, let alone come to a conclusion, that really amounts
to speculation. But suppose he did stall. I submit that anyone who
stalls while flying over a runway is likely to do that when taking off.

Minimum safe altitude is that altitude necessary to ensure being able
to glide to a safe landing in the event of a power failure.

FAR 91.119 does not define minimum safe altitude based on the safe
landing of the aircraft itself in the event of power failure. It's
based on whether such a landing will result in undue hazard to the
persons or the property on the surface. Otherwise you will never be
legal flying below 500AGL over the open water.

U.S FAR 91.119 still carries the grand tradition that as part 91
flyers, you're allowed to do certain risky things, as long as you're
only endangering yourself. That's a great tradition that makes this
country great, folks.