Originally Posted by
FH1100 Pilot
No, Jim. The "safety pilot" is merely a sandbag. He probably has a rating but has too few hours to be considered a PIC. So he rides along on flight where the customer requests/requires two pilots. At the destination, he hops out and unloads the pax and bags and makes sure nobody walks into the tail rotor (if it has one). If he's wearing a white shirt and epaulets, the customer won't ever know that he's not a fully-qualified Part-135 captain. If he's lucky, the return leg is empty and he actually can log some stick-time. I did this quite a lot in my younger days. I'm sure people still do. At the end of the day, it's still a single-pilot operation, and the PIC is the guy-in-charge, just as if the other guy wasn't there at all.
What's the purpose of requiring a sandbag? It doesn't appear to have benefitted the flight in question (incidental contributing factor?).