Flight school plane with other instructor

jesse said:
Not in my area. There aren't exactly a lot of people renting airplanes out. As to the insurance portion that's quite clear in the policy.

I want to provide as much freedom and flexibility to rental pilots as possible and have an incredibly fair rental agreement with very few things restricted. Not much I can do about the insurance side.
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Fact of the matter is, you're going to have a hard time telling if a student is renting and getting instruction with a friend or something.

If something happens and both the renter and his CFI decide to be difficult you'll have a hell of a time proving anything other than a plane was damaged while being rented by Joe.

Come to think about it, most places I've rented have had more than 4 CFIs, and most places I've approached haven't had a issue with me using their planes for instruction.
 
Unregistered said:
Private pilot is checked out and rents regularly from Airport/Flight School A. He decides to prepare for his commercial cert, but has an independent CFI that he likes, not affiliated with that flight school. He rents a plane, flies it Airport B to meet and pick up his freelance instructor. He still flies from the left seat, receives and logs commercial instruction, and acts as PIC at all times. Says good bye to his CFI and returns back to the Airport A, pays for the rental and says thanks and see ya.

Any real or ethical rules being broken?
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This would violate the rental agreement at pretty much every FBO/flight school I know. Some will allow you to make arrangements for such deals, but even those will not allow it done without their prior approval. The result could be invalidation of the FBO's insurance coverage and make the renter completely responsible for any damage which occurs. Even if nothing bad happens, if the FBO/flight school finds out, it could end one's rental privileges, and you'd be amazed how word of such shenanigans travels around local flying communities.

OTOH, this does not violate any FAA regulation.
 
Unregistered said:
Well, these are the responses I was sort of expecting.

Sure, they can SAY anything they want in a rental agreement. But how can that be enforced or recognized? Basically I'm picking up my friend and we're going for a plane ride together. I am PIC every second. Now if there was some hood work, or something like that, they'd have every right to dictate who they want in the right seat.

But just because I log instruction I've run afoul of some arbitrary agreement?
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If the question is not whether you're breaking rules, but rather whether you can get away with breaking those rules, I'd refer you to my post above -- you'd be amazed how word gets around. That's how we caught a Student Pilot ("Jack") carrying a passenger back in Louisville a long time ago.

A local pilot was leaving the restaurant at a popular lunch airport when he saw Jack get out of one of our planes with someone not known to him to be a school instructor When that someone landed back at Bowman, he asked the flight school owner when "Jack" had passed his Private ride. "He hasn't," said the owner, who was then waiting when "Jack" landed back at Bowman -- on what became his last flight in one of our planes.
 
Unregistered said:
I don't personally think it's wrong, but realistically, I can't imagine going up to the desk, saying, I'd like to rent the 172 because I'm going to pick up my CFI friend over at XXX for a lesson.
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You must have some reason (like knowing it's not kosher) if you can't imagine doing that. In any event, now you know -- it's generally prohibited in rental agreements/flight school rules, and it would not at all be surprising if someone who tried that got caught doing it.
 
James331 said:
Nothing in the FAA regs says you can't.

Worse case you tick the FBO off.
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That's not the worst case. The worst case is you destroy the plane and injure or kill your passenger, and the FBO's insurer comes after you for everything they pay out for what happened while you were operating the aircraft in a manner contrary to your rental agreement.
 
Ron Levy said:
A local pilot was leaving the restaurant at a popular lunch airport when he saw Jack get out of one of our planes with someone not known to him to be a school instructor When that someone landed back at Bowman, he asked the flight school owner when "Jack" had passed his Private ride. "He hasn't," said the owner, who was then waiting when "Jack" landed back at Bowman -- on what became his last flight in one of our planes.
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Shame the owner didn't have a GoPro or similar. That encounter would have made a damn funny Youtube video!
 
SoonerAviator said:
I agree. I have never had a problem with any request from the FBOs I've rented from. However, if one asked to view my logbook for a general review, I'd probably tell them 'no'. It's no different than being ramp checked by an FAA inspector. They can request to see your logbook, but you don't have to provide it at that time.
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If you have it with you, you sure do. And lying about whether or not you have it handy is a Federal felony criminal offense (18 USC 1001, to be exact).
 
SoonerAviator said:
I don't think you understand what PIC is, then. Guess who gets to log PIC while under instuction for the IR . . . the "student". The only things required to log PIC is to be the sole manipulator of the controls and to be rated in the category/class of the aircraft. The pilot has to be meeting the second condition in order for the FBO to rent it to him, and unless he learns really well by watching the instructor fly the approaches the whole time, he will be manipulating the controls as well.
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The fact that you get to log PIC time doesn't change the fact that by Federal case precedent, an instructor giving training is automatically "deemed" to be the pilot in command for FAA legal purposes. Administrator v. Hamre, 3 NTSB 28, 31 (1977). So, if you bring on an unauthorized instructor to give you training, you've just let that unauthorized person act as PIC, and that violates every rental contract I've ever seen.
 
mtuomi said:
Shame the owner didn't have a GoPro or similar. That encounter would have made a damn funny Youtube video!
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Yeah. Especially since "Jack's" story was that he was out solo in the practice area the whole time. Dick just asked, "Where y'been, Jack?" and let Jack pay out all the rope needed to hang him. Then Dick said, "Well, Ol' Charlie just got back from Rough River and told me he saw you there." Went downhill real quick after that. The fact that "Jack" had been gone 2-1/2 hours but only needed 8 gallons to top the Cessna 150's tanks didn't help Jack's credibility, either.

Unfortunately, such devices hadn't been invented in 1978.
 
Ron Levy said:
Yeah. Especially since "Jack's" story was that he was out solo in the practice area the whole time. Dick just asked, "Where y'been, Jack?" and let Jack pay out all the rope needed to hang him. Then Dick said, "Well, Ol' Charlie just got back from Rough River and told me he saw you there." Went downhill real quick after that. The fact that "Jack" had been gone 2-1/2 hours but only needed 8 gallons to top the Cessna 150's tanks didn't help Jack's credibility, either.

Unfortunately, such devices hadn't been invented in 1978.
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Maybe he was extremely LOP... :lol:
 
As another FBO operator here...

If someone comes to us and asks us about using their favorite personal CFI that isn't on our "roster", we'll almost always take the steps to make that CFI covered on our insurance policy and let them go for it. It doesn't happen often, but it has, just again this summer in fact, and in those cases we're okay with it, since it's not a big area and we typically know both the pilot and the CFI they want to use. However, if someone takes our airplane, goes to another airport and picks up another CFI on the sneak, against our rental agreement/rules, and without talking to us, they are gone, we don't need their business, and they won't be renting from more than just us in the future... I think people above already explained why that's wrong pretty clearly. If you're sneaking around, you already know it's wrong. It's not your airplane, you agreed to the rules, you don't like it, go somewhere else or buy your own with which you can do and let others do whatever you wish.
 
midlifeflyer said:
Just as you do with your car. You lend your car to a friend to go pick up his mom from the hospital. That's the deal. Pick up his mom from the hospital and bring her home. But while he has it, he decides, what the heck, so long as I have the car, I'll bring it to the stock car drag races.
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I think that's allowed down south:D

Ron Levy said:
This would violate the rental agreement at pretty much every FBO/flight school I know.
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Ron, have you ever personally had trouble in your line of work getting approved as an out-of-town CFI?
 
danhagan said:
Ron, have you ever personally had trouble in your line of work getting approved as an out-of-town CFI?
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Since 90% of my work is in planes owned by the trainee, it's not usually an issue and PIC's reputation pretty much always satisfies any owner's insurer. Also, PIC has arrangements with a few FBO's around the country, so we try to stick to them when the client doesn't have his/her own plane just to avoid these problems. A couple of times I've been allowed to give training in another FBO's planes (the most recent being one where one of my former students at the university ten years ago is now the Chief Instructor, which I think helped ;)). However, we have from time to time been unable to come to terms with an FBO whose plane a potential client wanted to use. Not much you can do when that happens. And there are a few FBO's we won't work with any more due to scheduling issues when they reneged on their agreement to commit the plane to our use for the duration.
 
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True, the FBO cannot request your logbook, but the FAA will, in the event of an accident. Based on the entries, the accident flight will be described in the accident report as "instructional flight" which pretty much tells the FBO what they need to know.



SoonerAviator said:
The FBO doesn't have authority to "examine" a logbook. The only information that needs to be provided is proof of BFRs, endorsements, and/or time in type for insurance purposes. I have nothing to hide, but I'd not be handing my logbook over to them for examination.

In reality, there is no FAA reg broken by doing this. As long as the aircraft is subject to 100hr inspections and has up-to-date IFR checks, the only thing that can happen is the FBO gets mad and says they won't let you rent from them anymore. Highly unlikely that they could sue for "damages" unless they can prove that they have turned away instruction due to lack of available rental aircraft. Even then, they would likely only be able to ask for whatever their profit margin is on instruction given, which is unlikely to be enough to bother going to court over.

Now, in the event of an accident involving insurance claims, the language of the insurance agreement would certainly come into play. So, I'd hope the pilot has non-owner's insurance and the CFI keeps his own as well.
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sarangan said:
True, the FBO cannot request your logbook, but the FAA will, in the event of an accident. Based on the entries, the accident flight will be described in the accident report as "instructional flight" which pretty much tells the FBO what they need to know.
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I'd imagine if someone knew they were going to be taken to the cleaners for smashing a plane, logs might get lost.
 
James331 said:
I'd imagine if someone knew they were going to be taken to the cleaners for smashing a plane, logs might get lost.
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If this didn't get lost they likely wouldn't log the flight where the accident happened as an instructional flight.
 
Yep.

It's best to be honest all around.

But if someone is going try to get outside instruction on the sly, you're never going to be able to prove it unless the person doing it is a blithering idiot.
 
James331 said:
But if someone is going try to get outside instruction on the sly, you're never going to be able to prove it unless the person doing it is a blithering idiot.
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As my ex-student "Jack" found out, it's not quite so hard to get caught breaking an FBO's rules.
 
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