Julian,
I was not getting into specifics but if a group requires a pilot to pay the full costs of a checkout then unless the other person is a flight instriuctor the they are simply a passenger who is flying for free.
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To use the car analogy posted previously, if you decide that before you allow me to drive your car you will check me out first then you are indeed entitled to do so. However, if your checkout is a drive on the public highway then by permitting such an act you have effectively decided that I am safe to drive the car and also that you will be safe as a passenger..........if you do not think I am safe or if your do not think that you will be safe as a passenger then your would be rather stupid to sit as a passenger in the car with me.
Thus you are not checking anything. You have already decided that it will be safe. You are simply going for a ride as a passenger in the car.
At the end of the ride, you may not think very much of my driving and declare that you will never let me near your car again or that you will never sit in a car with me again.................but you could do that at the end of any drive......even after I have been driving the car for some time............thus the trip round the block is not a check unless you say that every time you are in the car you are checking and thus every drive is a check-drive.
Do you see the point now?
Regards,
DFC