bose me old fella. You haven't seen some of the standards I have. I haven't actually done this and it would take someone of extreme dangernosity to make me do it, but if you saw someone who was clearly a total menace and likely to cause an accident killing themselves and possibly others around them and you DIDN't do everything you could, then you my friend would be the embarrasment to the instructors fraternity.
I don't know about you, but I couldn't give two hoot about what the law said in this case. If someone is dangerous, then I will do something about it.
Judging "danger" in this case is far more than watching handling skills, it also encompasses how someone thinks about flying and all the associated knowledge.
In the 10 years I've been instructing, I've only met 2 people who have caused me to think like this. One I worked for weeks with to try and bring his attitude round. He was the sky god in this case, not me. Flying his own machine that was out of check, on an expired permit, no insurance, his licence had expired years before and he'd clearly never flown with anyone after passing his test years before. His handling skills were horrifying as well.
We had many a meeting about him between us all at the club. I was a relatively inexperienced FI at the time and all of us were in agreement in what we were doing. In fact it was the extremely experienced CFI who decided that "shopping him" would be the next step as all our other efforts were failing to get him to realise what he was doing was simply dangerous.
Eventually I seemed to get through to him and managed to bring him up to standard where we were all happy.
I treat this as a success as he was probably the most difficult student I've ever flown with, even though he'd had a licence for years.
The other refused to fly with any of us at the club after I'd told him I wouldn't sign his logbook. So he went off, got himself signed off by an FI at another club and then a few weeks later went off in awful conditions with his son on board and killed them both.
That has haunted me ever since. Could I have done more? If I'd have rung round and spoken to the other club with my fears, could the accident have been avoided?
So Bose, off the high horse please. It is an extreme move that I am prepared to make, but have never done it. If you had been put in a similar situation and you didn't do everything you could. How would you feel. Or do you not take your responsibilities as seriously as I do?