COPILOT/FO/P2 RESPONSIBILITIES
So you now have a P2 rating on that turbine and you are offered a job flying the a/c somewhere in Africa (or further afield). You arrive and start flying the routes. Strange, you think, many of these A/Ds have potholes big enough to cripple a King Air, your Caravan seems to be quite heavily loaded and fully fueled but no mass and balance form is filled in, then to your horror you take off with full flaps! Your 1900 develops a couple of MEL snags which should delay the flight, but they are not written into the flight folio and the flight proceeds anyway. And your captain was with you the night before and your are sure that his last Castle went down well after midnight!
You innocently enquire why you were never taught GPS letdowns on groundschool and don't you need to carry more reserve fuel for this flight? The answer is "you must look after the client and if we don't, the opposition will get the contract - they are much better than us, they can take off on unbalanced fields and fly much more overweight than we can!"
But you are new and really need the hours so you decide not to rock the boat. So where do you stand if anything should go wrong?
I don't believe that the buck stops with the captain and would like to open the bidding at 49% of the responsibility. I would be intrigued to find out what the consensus is out there. Also what responsibility do the office bearers in your company carry for expecting such operations? If your ops manager doesn't have a COM or ATPL what authority has the CAA got over him?
My instructor used to say "don't worry what the CAA has to say, what does your insurance company say?"
Don't wait too long to learn the answer first hand!
Last edited by lambert; 5th Mar 2003 at 13:58.