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- Feb 25, 2007
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What actions can a passenger or safety pilot legally take?
A case in point, some years ago I was riding in a 65 hp J3 with a CFII friend of mine. He was flying from the rear seat, I was just riding in the front, fat, dumb, happy, and looking out the door (my usual mental and physical state). He landed on an asphalt runway with a mild left crosswind and failed to kill his drift before he touched down. The plane immediately veered off to the left at an angle of maybe 45 or 50 degrees to the centerline, heading straight for a runway marker light (one of the type that stick up about 15 inches or so above the ground). I assumed he was going to immediately straighten the plane back up to the runway, so didn't think much about it. But, he didn't. He firewalled the throttle, pulled back on the stick, and headed straight for that runway light, trying to takeoff. It was obvious that we weren't going to break ground before we reached the light, but he had it boresighted anyway. It seemed to me that running over it might be hard on the runway light, and maybe even the prop and landing gear too. So I hollered, "I got it", neutralized the stick, overrode him on the rudder, giving it hard right rudder to initialize a right turn, chopped the throttle to idle once the turn was established, and let the plane turn right till we were almost but not quite aligned with the runway. Then while still well off to the left side and still turning right at a pretty good clip, I firewalled the throttle again and hit hard left rudder to kill the right turn so we would be back on centerline and aligned again. At that point I chopped throttle for the second time and gave control of the plane back over to him. No impacts, no collisions, and no damage to anything.
My questions are -- was what I did legal? Was my judgement OK? I'm not an instructor, he is a CFII. I was just riding, with no intent of acting as safety pilot. I made no attempt to explain what I was doing to him, or why I was doing it. Did I have the right to take control of the plane, or should I have left it with him?
JimC
A case in point, some years ago I was riding in a 65 hp J3 with a CFII friend of mine. He was flying from the rear seat, I was just riding in the front, fat, dumb, happy, and looking out the door (my usual mental and physical state). He landed on an asphalt runway with a mild left crosswind and failed to kill his drift before he touched down. The plane immediately veered off to the left at an angle of maybe 45 or 50 degrees to the centerline, heading straight for a runway marker light (one of the type that stick up about 15 inches or so above the ground). I assumed he was going to immediately straighten the plane back up to the runway, so didn't think much about it. But, he didn't. He firewalled the throttle, pulled back on the stick, and headed straight for that runway light, trying to takeoff. It was obvious that we weren't going to break ground before we reached the light, but he had it boresighted anyway. It seemed to me that running over it might be hard on the runway light, and maybe even the prop and landing gear too. So I hollered, "I got it", neutralized the stick, overrode him on the rudder, giving it hard right rudder to initialize a right turn, chopped the throttle to idle once the turn was established, and let the plane turn right till we were almost but not quite aligned with the runway. Then while still well off to the left side and still turning right at a pretty good clip, I firewalled the throttle again and hit hard left rudder to kill the right turn so we would be back on centerline and aligned again. At that point I chopped throttle for the second time and gave control of the plane back over to him. No impacts, no collisions, and no damage to anything.
My questions are -- was what I did legal? Was my judgement OK? I'm not an instructor, he is a CFII. I was just riding, with no intent of acting as safety pilot. I made no attempt to explain what I was doing to him, or why I was doing it. Did I have the right to take control of the plane, or should I have left it with him?
JimC
