Twistedenginestarter
I agree with your attitude to air safety, but not your conclusion about this thread.
You are subjectively perceiving an implication that macintosh is defending his friend per se, but if you read his posting objectively, what he is asking is if the instructor should refuse to sign the logbook to say that the flight has taken place, as it is a training flight not a test.
The dissonance that you are feeling is driven by the system in place being highly ambiguous and unsatisfactory.
There are always many different perspectives in life. In a similar hypothetical situation, it could be argued that an instructor could be seeking to line his own pocket by insisting on unecessary remedial training in circumstances where there is a lot of "grey" over the roles and responsibilities of instructors offering these training flights.
Please note that I am not suggesting that this would ever happen, but have vague and ambiguous situations does open the door to many unpalatable situations.
What needs to happen is that the situation is made clearer. Until then, there will be more and more of these argy bargys and I don't see how it helps air safety, as the resonance to the PPL community will be that these instructional flights are threatening.
BTW, to agree with Bookworm, I did a club checkout a few years ago and the instructor demonstrating a PFL had difficulty maintaining +/- 5kias - even setting the stall warner off a couple of times. I am no hotshot, but I can do much better than that and would be concerned if this guy was judging my piloting ability with the ability to ground me.
[This message has been edited by Final 3 Greens (edited 29 June 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Final 3 Greens (edited 29 June 2001).]