Pondlife,
Thanks for your reply.
Appologies for the miss use of wording "checkout".
Currency is a better word. I used the word "checkout", because the club which I instruct at insists on being "right hand seat checked out" if you go to instruct on a different aircraft type even if it is inside the same SEP classification. This makes sense in terms of safety. This type of familiarisation exercise I believe can be done with a confident PPL sitting in the left hand seat.
If I didn't re-familierise myself in a 172 and go straight into the right hand seat for the first time. If I got caught in a difficult situation crashed the aircraft, I may be legal but would be heavily criticised by the CAA investigators.
Nevertheless this case is particularly confusing. Further details:
The colleague who is in this group wants a safety pilot to fly with him as he has passed his 90 day period and is not so confident about going up solo to do his three take off and landings. He is still within the two year currency.
The insurance of his flying group does not allow any other PPL to sit in the right hand seat unless they are an instructor. There are no instructors in the group. So an instructor will be required, or he will have to take a risk and go solo himself.
The 90 day rule is clear in that you cannot carry passengers. So as an instructor can I go airborne sitting in the right hand seat with my colleague as P1? In effect I would only be a 'virtual passenger', not there in terms of his P1 90 day rule, but there in terms of my licence rating and if the situation arrises if he should get into difficulty.
Does this situation not work the same way as a bi-annual checkout of a pilot in his own plane? Could I be P1 with my colleague as P1/S (or would it be logged as PUT?).
Surely the best description of this scenario is my colleague is Pilot in command under supervision, with me in the right hand seat as Pilot in command. i.e. colleage as P1/S and me as P1 taking control only in emergency.
Pleae advise...