Total time vs PIC time

I am surprised any European country allows P2 logging in the 2 x PPL scenario.

Me too…

But as you say, it is your logbook and if you want, you can draw little pink bunnies in it. I have heard of one (private) pilot who has recorded a flight as passenger on Concorde and even got the captain to sign his logbook after the flight.

And exactly for this reason you usually need to do a checkride before being allowed to fly any club or rental plane because no one believes what your logbook says. And for the same reason, you need to pass a simulator screening and so and so many flights under supervision if you want to get a job as commercial pilot, because logbooks are logbooks and flying skills are flying skills.

Swapping the role of PIC during a flight should not be possible under any regulation because it would create a “legal vacuum” regarding responsibility.

Oh dear. For GA flying is about fun and pleasure, and a statement like that dampens that spirit. Though I appreciate the sentiment, particularly if the PPL in the right hand seat busts some airspace or something and later says sorry guv, me, I was just a mere passenger at the time! But the only way to enforce that is to deny a PPL in the right hand seat ever being allowed to legally say “I have control”. AFAIK, there isn’t a law under FAA or EASA preventing a PPL from flying in the right hand seat, and I don’t believe a log book entry from an instructor is required to verify appropriate training or capability. Or am I wrong ?

…GA flying is about fun and pleasure…

GA flying might be fun and pleasure for some, for others (like me) it’s the basic source of income. Regulated just like any other job.

AFAIK, there isn’t a law under FAA or EASA preventing a PPL from flying in the right hand seat, …

This thread is not, as I understand it, about flying from the right hand seat, but about who can log the flying time as pilot in command.

…and I don’t believe a log book entry from an instructor is required to verify appropriate training or capability. Or am I wrong ?

That depends on the type of aeroplane you fly. For the one I fly at work (a GA type!) I need to do a right hand seat checkride once per year in order to be allowed to fly it as PIC from the right.

That depends on the type of aeroplane you fly. For the one I fly at work (a GA type!) I need to do a right hand seat checkride once per year in order to be allowed to fly it as PIC from the right.

True, but I’m thinking what can be logged and in what seat from a non-commercial point of view. The OP mentioned PPL, which I took to be non commercial, but I take my hat off to you and what you fly.

PiperArcher, yes you are wrong, sorry. “Having control” — that is, flying the aircraft — is not the same thing as being PIC. Which is also not necessarily the same thing as logging PIC…

If we’re talking about PPLs in simple aircraft in EASA-land, then only the PIC may log time as PIC, but the PIC need not be the person actually flying the aircraft.

Whether or not it is legal to swap PIC in flight, I don’t now (and it is too late for me to dig through the regs), but I agree with What Next that it is inadvisable. The AMC to FCL.050 does say that the operator should designate the PIC before the flight, but the AMC is not in itself a regulation.

This is not the way it works. Nowhere.

Certainly possible under FAA regs.

This kinda sounds like picking pennies up of the street. Small and dubious value. Is the pilot who occupies right seat “current” to fly the aircraft from the right seat? Does the provider of the plane think so? If I were providing a 172 to a rental pilot, who I found out was allowing another pilot to land it from the right seat, I would be some upset – I would deem that to be “instruction” – not authorized for two PPL’s

As a provider of an aircraft to a pilot, I would not think much of a claim to ten minutes of PIC in the right seat of a 172. If you need to log the time, you’ll need to log it as an indication of a more “whole” flight than that. If a pilot actually flew an entire ten minute long flight, that’s a whole flight. Log it as such. But if a pilot spent a ten minute portion of someone else’s flight handling the plane from the right seat, that, in my opinion, holds little value as an indication of proficiency. A flight is a whole event, which needs to be beginning to end to be an indication of proficiency.

A pilot accepted responsibility for the plane, and initiated the flight, it was not a group effort. That pilot is the qualified person that the provider of the plane expects was flying it, and thus is credited with the PIC time in it. Unless that pilot is an instructor, and instruction was happening, that pilot has little if any right to allow another pilot to fly any portion of the flight. Okay, bimbling around the sky, who really cares, but it’s hardly skills development either.

If a “flight” consisted of many circuits, and the current (in the right seat) right seat pilot flew all of some of those circuits I could see that as a case for logging PIC time for that portion of the flight – IF the provider of the plane agreed to that use of the plane. That, to me means that the provider of the plane checked out two pilots, one of whom was checked out to fly the whole flight from the right seat. How often does that happen? Anything else is verging on instruction.

If you’re second seat to a private pilot, enjoy the flight, and learn what you can, but that pilot was the PIC, and should take the credit for flying the flight. If you are given responsibility for the plane, and the flight, fly it and log the time PIC. If you are a commercial pilot in a different role, you know what you should log. If someone actually reviews your logbook so as to extract short amounts of flight time for which piloting credit is taken, you’re more likely to get some suspicious questions about how those flights were flown – like a handful of street pennies.

It’s your actual flying skills which are important, and being considered by the provider of a plane – not the “title” of PIC, changed like a hat. Those skills are hardly developed by flying ten minutes here and there, right seat during someone else’s 172 flight. Get the plane yourself, and fly the whole flight, and log that time as PIC. Take your buddy if you like. Go for a flight with your buddy one day, while they log the PIC for the flight they fly.

The dangers of legal vacuums in GA

The PIC has more responsibilities than just flying the aircraft. In fact, flying the aircraft is a thing the PIC is free to delegate. But he cannot delegate the responsibilities of being PIC. In a multi crew aircraft things are different I guess. So who actually flyes the aircraft is irrelevant.

Regarding the original question, command can’t change during a flight.

So pilot A logs 1:00 PIC.