God! Isn't it tragic that people are asking if briefings are "mandatory" or "legally required"? Has our society really been brianwashed to that degree?
Whatever happened to making sure your guests were as safe as you could make them be simply by doing the job carefully and taking a reasonable degree of pride in doing it properly? That used to be the defining character of general aviation. I am aware standards have slipped...
Yachtsman have been doing this for decades and I had never, until today, really considered that briefings might have legal implications. They are just an immovable part of the scenery for common sense and safety's sake. Naiive? **** no! Professional! Just Professional. It would never occur to me to take anyone on a boat or an aircraft without a suitable safety brief. That's not done for legal reasons but for the simple responsibility of a decent man towards trusting people under his care, and the sooner we started thinking about it in those terms the better the world would be in many fields, not just aviation.
What a sick, pathetically acrimonious/paranoid world we live in if pilots, be they marine or airborne, think the primary use of a safety briefing is to ward off legal grief!
Grow a pair, you lot, will you? Why not just take a pride in doing what you do to the best of your ability?
Also, no amount of "briefing" will protect you if your negligence results in a claim, will it?
Moral;
1) Never fly pax who are so anal they might sue in the event of an accident. Decent people don't. (in the case of accident c.f culpble negligence)
2) If you do have an accident with such litigious arses on board ensure that the accident is not due to your negligence that is a totally different matter - ie be totally and unimpeachably Professional. Then their claim will fall on the stony ground where it belongs.
Last edited by noflynomore; 17th Jul 2017 at 22:11.