Originally Posted by
Uplinker
Wow. It amazes me that things like this still happen.
Those unauthorized seat swaps were common at some carriers years ago. It was considered 'cool' to put the flight engineer in the FO seat to give him or her a landing.
About three decades ago in MIA the 727 captain did the seat swap at the gate. The FO had been at the panel before so he remembered enough to run the plumbing for a leg. The FE in the right seat briefed the taxi, takeoff and departure as a jumpseat rider was waiting to say hello at the cockpit door. You know where this one is going.
The jumpseat rider was an FAA inspector with his form 110A onboard to observe the sector. Things went well, the FE got a little coaching from the captain and made a good landing at DCA. The fed said 'good job boys! and got off.
A couple of weeks later the fed was back in MIA talking to the base chief pilot. He said he had line checked an FO who had the same last name, he flies the plane well. The chief pilot said 'Yeah, he's my cousin. But he hasn't upgraded to FO yet.'
The FE with an FO line check in his training folder ended up at ValuJet/AirTran/Southwest. His chief pilot cousin went to United I believe.
Some airlines allow two captains to fly together under some circumstances so all captains are theoretically trained to fly in the right seat. I was never keen on this concept even though the guy in the right seat usually got hefty premium pay under our contract. The few times I ended up in the right seat as a captain I agreed to buy dinner if the colleague in the left seat would make all the landings.