Faking a safety pilot

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Bigfake

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What are the repercussions of faking a safety pilot? A guy at my flight school said he will usually just go out solo and fly his approaches for 6hits and then put a buddy’s name in his log. What are the repercussions of doing something like this?
 
Why is he "still" in a flight school if he's had an instrument rating long enough to need to maintain currency? Presumably in a flight school environment, plenty of folks would be willing to safety pilot and log the time themselves...
 
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As far as legal repercussions, the FAA strongly discourages falsification. If your buddy has any desire to be an ATP, getting caught could prevent that.
 
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If you’re going to do that, why not go for broke? Just fake most of your PIC hours. Don’t even go up, just log actual too. That’s just dumb to do it part-way like this, saves more money if you’re going to be dishonest and dangerous anyway. Don’t be half-stupid.
 
Bigfake said:
What are the repercussions of faking a safety pilot? A guy at my flight school said he will usually just go out solo and fly his approaches for 6hits and then put a buddy’s name in his log. What are the repercussions of doing something like this?
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Have this guy go read 18 USC 1001.

If someone reports this to the FAA, they will investigate. And they can demand he produce the logbook.

If they establish he has made fraudulent entries, he will experience a revocation of all certificates.

Oh, Happy Thanksgiving!
 
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Bigfake said:
What are the repercussions of faking a safety pilot? A guy at my flight school said he will usually just go out solo and fly his approaches for 6hits and then put a buddy’s name in his log. What are the repercussions of doing something like this?
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Is he actually flying the approaches under simulated IMC (i.e. wearing the hood or foggles) but without a safety pilot? Repercussions - midair (death), CFIT (death), uncontrolled FIT (death), other types of death.

Or is he flying perfectly visual, no foggles, and just logging them as simulated IMC anyway? (If so, why bother actually flying them anyway, just pencil-whip the log entries at that point.) Repercussions if he actually then flies into real IMC because he's "current" - uncontrolled FIT (death), other types of death.

And, you know, certificate revocation like others have mentioned.

Loss of integrity and trust among others, too, which may not matter to him, but it's big in my book.
 
Why record any names of safety pilots in your logbook? I didn’t know that was a requirement.
 
NoHeat said:
Why record any names of safety pilots in your logbook? I didn’t know that was a requirement.
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61.51(b) Logbook entries. For the purposes of meeting the requirements of paragraph (a) of this section, each person must enter the following information for each flight or lesson logged:​
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(1) General—​
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(i) Date.​
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(ii) Total flight time or lesson time.​
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(iii) Location where the aircraft departed and arrived, or for lessons in a full flight simulator or flight training device, the location where the lesson occurred.​
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(iv) Type and identification of aircraft, full flight simulator, flight training device, or aviation training device, as appropriate.​
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(v) The name of a safety pilot, if required by §91.109 of this chapter.​
 
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At it’s core, aviation requires honesty. If a pilot can’t be honest when documenting the basics, how can that same pilot to be trusted when they are signing for the jet?

More importantly, if the pilot isn’t maintaining the minimum currency requirement, what does that say about their proficiency when it’s time do the aviator stuff when it counts.

I’d find a better person to hang around with.
 
“Good moral character” is a part of all things aviation.

If you’re at the flight school with him, why don’t you offer to ride shotgun and help do it legitimately? Surely it can’t be that difficult to find someone to act as safety pilot.
 
I really think the odds of enforcement consequences are nil. The whole dropping a dime, and them caring, not likely. They’re more afraid of the consequences of the dime dropper being wrong than catching this guy.

He drops the dime on himself vis a vis YouTube, different story.

The normalization of that deviance causing REAL consequences (some type of death…), significant.
 
Tools said:
I really think the odds of enforcement consequences are nil. The whole dropping a dime, and them caring, not likely. They’re more afraid of the consequences of the dime dropper being wrong than catching this guy.

He drops the dime on himself vis a vis YouTube, different story.

The normalization of that deviance causing REAL consequences (some type of death…), significant.
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Probably true, but I don't want to fly with this pilot, or any pilot like them, TBH, and I believe I'm part of a large majority. Taking shortcuts is dangerous for yourself, and those who *trust* you.
 
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RussR said:
Loss of integrity and trust among others, too, which may not matter to him, but it's big in my book.
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Preach it brother! Integrity is one of the most valuable things a human can have. One of the things missing from the "Back in the day" thread is that back in the day a man's word was his bond and a handshake confirmed a deal. Fool me once and we're done ...
 
If someone is flying "hood" time, but there's no safety pilot on board, how does anyone know if that person has actually done the instrument flying, too? Is this character even looking for birds and traffic under the hood, or is it really VFR flying while pretending to fly IFR with GPS waypoints?

Sooner or later, the truth will come out for lack of practice and proficiency. Cheating the system is really cheating yourself, and endagering yourself and others, either by not looking out for birds and traffic, or by not learning to actually fly the procedures under the hood. One way or the other, something is being missed.
 
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Tools said:
I really think the odds of enforcement consequences are nil.
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You might be right, but I think it’s a little above nil. Sometimes these kinds of things come up in the course of investigating something else. Some pilot deviation and the ASI requests the logbook to show currency and gets suspicious about some entries. I suspect outside the medical arena, most falsification revocations happen that way.

As an ASI once told me, “you’d be surprised at the number of other violations we find when we investigate an event.” At the time he and I were discussing a case in which it happened.
 
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Tools said:
I really think the odds of enforcement consequences are nil. The whole dropping a dime, and them caring, not likely. They’re more afraid of the consequences of the dime dropper being wrong than catching this guy.

He drops the dime on himself vis a vis YouTube, different story.

The normalization of that deviance causing REAL consequences (some type of death…), significant.
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This is where you are wrong.

The FAA primary mission is safety, and they are mandated to investigate every complaint. There is no “gee, we don’t care about this one” and dropping it.


This would be an easy investigation. Send the pilot an LOI requesting he appear with his logbook. Talk to the pilot, make copies of the pages in question, then contact the name used as a safety pilot. Ask some questions to verify if he was there. If suspected the safety pilot is not being truthful, tell him to bring his logbook in for examination. Typically that’s when they fold.


18 USC 1001 is very real, and the pilot could see revocation of all certificates.

So, “do you feel lucky?”
 
midlifeflyer said:
You might be right, but I think it’s a little above nil. Sometimes these kinds of things come up in the course of investigating something else. Some pilot deviation and the ASI requests the logbook to show currency and gets suspicious about some entries. I suspect outside the medical arena, most falsification revocations happen that way.

As an ASI once told me, “you’d be surprised at the number of other violations we find when we investigate an event.” At the time he and I were discussing a case in which it happened.
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Or you get to that C-MEL check ride in a 1,000hrs and can’t pass the OEI instrument landing.
 
midlifeflyer said:
Sometimes these kinds of things come up in the course of investigating something else.
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To include maintenance issues as well. What adds insult to injury is after a minor incident like running over a taxi light, in the course of the investigation they find the owner kept a discrepancy list in the logbook for the next annual and one of those items was the root cause to hitting the light. Takes the proverbial smoking gun to the next level.
 
Doc Holliday said:
This would be an easy investigation. Send the pilot an LOI requesting he appear with his logbook. Talk to the pilot, make copies of the pages in question, then contact the name used as a safety pilot. Ask some questions to verify if he was there. If suspected the safety pilot is not being truthful, tell him to bring his logbook in for examination. Typically that’s when they fold.
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There are one or two of these types of falsifications in the reported cases where the FAA ends up going to the FBO records to find an airplane wasn't flown or was flown for less time than logged.

I just reread this again:
Tools said:
I really think the odds of enforcement consequences are nil. The whole dropping a dime, and them caring, not likely. They’re more afraid of the consequences of the dime dropper being wrong than catching this guy.
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When I replied earlier, I thought you were talking in terms of the likelihood of getting caught. So I sort of agreed, with a but....

If you are talking about the FAA doing something about it if they suspect or know, IMO, you are just wrong. 61.59 may well be one of the regulations the FAA takes the most seriously (it is a felony, after all) and it almost always results in revocation of all certificates and ratings (the standard penalty for the violation). Edit: This is from the FAA enforcement manual:

1732716684295.png


The FAA almost always investigates "dime dropper" complaints. Even absurd ones like some Facebook moron reporting a joke about giving flight review without being an instructor (just ask @SixPapaCharlie :D)

Besides, what "consequences of the dime dropper being wrong" would the FAA conceivably worry about?
 
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Witmo said:
I imagine somebody drops a dime on him to the FAA and they check his log book and contact the "safety pilot" to confirm. Falsifying his log book could conceivably result in all his certificates being revoked.
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So the FAA calls his buddy, and being a buddy he says “Yeah, I flew with him.” Knowing the likelihood of this, would the FAA even bother?
 
I’ve seen them ignore much worse, several times personally.

I’ve also seen them threaten a dime dropper with “if this is frivolous, we’re coming after you…”, in the case of a airport manager wanting to drop a frivolous dime on me.

But mostly, in this case, given their generally professed extreme workload, just can’t see them really dedicating any resources to it. I couldn’t get them to be responsive to legitimate inquiries as a manager of three certificates… 141, 145 and a tours LOA.

Different experiences.
 
Half Fast said:
So the FAA calls his buddy, and being a buddy he says “Yeah, I flew with him.” Knowing the likelihood of this, would the FAA even bother?
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FAA must investigate every complaint, period.

There is no “don’t bother” file. Every complaint will be investigated.

And if the buddy says “yea, I flew with him” then the reply is “great!, send us copies of the log pages in your book” and follow with “btw, falsification of records is a felony under 18 USC 1001, just in case you are wondering”.
 
Tools said:
I’ve seen them ignore much worse, several times personally.

I’ve also seen them threaten a dime dropper with “if this is frivolous, we’re coming after you…”, in the case of a airport manager wanting to drop a frivolous dime on me.

But mostly, in this case, given their generally professed extreme workload, just can’t see them really dedicating any resources to it. I couldn’t get them to be responsive to legitimate inquiries as a manager of three certificates… 141, 145 and a tours LOA.

Different experiences.
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Again, goes back to “Do you feel lucky?”
 
Is there a rule that the safety pilot has to log the flight? I may or may not have flown as a safety pilot and probably did not log it.
 
Doc Holliday said:
FAA must investigate every complaint, period.

There is no “don’t bother” file. Every complaint will be investigated.

And if the buddy says “yea, I flew with him” then the reply is “great!, send us copies of the log pages in your book” and follow with “btw, falsification of records is a felony under 18 USC 1001, just in case you are wondering”.
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Well, there's not requirement for a safety pilot to log the flight. I've known people who don't.

Half Fast said:
the FAA calls his buddy, and being a buddy he says “Yeah, I flew with him.” Knowing the likelihood of this, would the FAA even bother?
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"Buddy" usually gets someone only so far. Although there's no logging requirement, "btw, lying to us is a federal felony" often get's people attention.

I think the problem with discounting this is based on a number of assumptions
One is the assumption that the FAA doesn't investigate hotline complaints. They do. Pretty much required to.
Another is that the investigation of this occurs in a vacuum. No, the FAA is not randomly selecting pilots to check on. There is almost always something else that is getting their attention. Sometimes it's something as simple as a basic IFR altitude deviation where the FAA asks for the logbook entries to verify currency and sees something funny.

Tools said:
I’ve also seen them threaten a dime dropper with “if this is frivolous, we’re coming after you…”, in the case of a airport manager wanting to drop a frivolous dime on me
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If it was a lie, I sure hope the FAA treats the felony seriously, but that's a reason for the reporter to be careful, not a consequence to the FAA of the reporter being wrong.

But you are right. Different experiences. Mine came from representing pilots and mechanics and hobnobbing with my fellow wizards..
 
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