RULES & REGS
So what is a
o be fair and avoid confusion, it’s worth acknowledging that to the average GA pilot the simple term ‘safety pilot’ might mean any one
safety pilot? T
of three separate roles. Two of these neither expect, nor authorise, the accompanying so-called ‘safety pilot’ to fl y the aircraft; the third, where a pilot has a medical restriction on their EASA medical certifi cate, certainly expects the safety pilot to take over fl ying the aircraft if necessary. It’s known as an ‘Operational Safety Pilot
Restriction’ (abbreviated to ‘OSL’), those fl ying as ‘pilot in command’ with such a medical annotation means they must have a ‘qualifi ed safety pilot’ in an aircraft with duplicate controls. The fi rst of two examples, where a ‘safety
pilot’ wouldn’t be expected to touch the controls, has existed for many years and is
often the fi rst that comes to mind when the term is used. The scenario often involves a pilot wanting to practice ‘instrument fl ying’ in good visibility — assuming he or she meets the ’90-day passenger’ rule for the type or class of aircraft being fl own.
Ask that question in a clubroom or around an airfi eld and there are likely to be two or three genuine, but quite diff erent answers, so here’s the lowdown
There is no offi cial logged role for the
‘safety pilot’ here other than ‘supernumerary’ and times do not count to offi cial totals; they are merely a passenger. In this ‘instrument practice’ there’s no prospect of the safety pilot taking over control, it’s really more to do with providing ‘eyes outside’ and relevant verbal warnings while the pilot in command keeps their ‘eyes inside’. When it comes to a ‘safety pilot’ for instrument practice it’s interesting to look at other countries – South Africa, for example, provides a succinct offi cial defi nition of the role which has slightly more than the ‘lookout’ that a UK pilot would assume: “Safety pilot... means a pilot whose sole purpose during fl ight time is to maintain a visual lookout for threats to an aircraft during simulated instrument fl ight and to monitor the aircraft’s engine ➤
Summer 2018 CLUED UP 17
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