Peter wrote:
It is fully legal here in the UK and is safe unless
It is legal in Europe too. I’ve recently learned that it is illegal in Australia.
Anyway, I don’t see a problem as holding the control does not mean that you are not responsible for the flight. As PIC you are entirely responsible for the conduct of the flight, if you feel that the passenger may do something stupid, then don’t let him grab the control:-) if he starts doing something stupid you should be able to take over before it gets to a point where you would need more than basic PPL level flying skills. The extra FI recovering skills are required because an FI needs to let a student go a bit further than you would as PPL with a passenger. For instance don’t give the control at low altitude, don’t let the passenger try to land or do stalls or steep turns or similar that’s when you need extra skills to recover. In straight and level flight, if you explain things before, you should not get into any scary situation (unless the passenger wants to kill himself but then he might grab the control anyway, so be prepared to smash his nose, I’ve been told that it works because the natural thing to do in that case is to bring ones hands to the nose and thus away from the control).
We need a thread on how to overpower a passenger who wants to kill you 
I would do rather more than hit his nose
