Flying over the Grand Canyon?

[BackPacker]

CraigJL, the situation is very simple. Until you have your PPL you will not be able to act as PIC of any aircraft with other people on board. So all of your flights where it is you plus somebody else on board are going to be flown with the instructor as PIC. And he's allowed to bring whatever passenger he wants (W&B permitting). But whether you've got a medical or gone solo earlier doesn't matter one bit.

The only time during your training where you are PIC (and thus need a medical, for instance) is when you're flying solo.

The only exception to this is your final flight test with the examiner. I forgot the details but it comes down to this: if successful you log the flight as PIC and the examiner is officially your first passenger, if not the examiner is PIC and you log it as something else.

So if you rent an airplane plus a CPL pilot you can go sightseeing. If the CPL happens to be an instructor, you can log the hours as "dual". If you make sure that at the end of the flight the instructor lists the exercises you've done during the flight and signs it, they even become part of your training record.

Having said that, if you still need to get your JAA class 2 medical it might be worth investigating if the ME can also give you an FAA class 3 medical (doubles as your student pilot certificate) for a little extra - the medical exam is almost 100% the same. With that in hand, you could maybe convince the school you're going to to let you go solo there as well. Those hours count towards your 45 hours as well, and the plane rental in the US is considerably cheaper than Europe.

Although I don't think you should expect to get a solo endorsement that would allow you to fly the GC, solo.

[CraigJL]

Although I don't think you should expect to get a solo endorsement that would allow you to fly the GC, solo.

I didn't expect to, I always knew it would have to be with an instructor - just checking if I could go AT ALL with an instructor, if you understand what I mean. Perhaps I didn't make clear, but I had no intention of acting as PIC, but from my experience in Barbados, the instructor was a safety net, and not much else.

Thanks for the clarification.

[BackPacker]

If his primary purpose is not flight training, but he's having a vacation with his parents and does one or two training flights that are really just scenic flights, I think you can argue that an M-1 visa is not required.

But as far as TSA clearance is required, well, that might indeed be a problem.

[n5296s]

But as far as TSA clearance is required, well, that might indeed be a problem.

If you already have a PPL in another country then this doesn't count as training towards a licence. Also discovery flights are explicitly excluded. So I think this would be safe. If you want to be 100% sure, call the TSA (at a location different from where you plan to go!). I had a similar question and called the local TSA guy, he was extremely helpful. Of course ymmv, so you might want to call the same guy I did - San Jose, CA. I'm afraid I lost the contact info but you can get it from the FSDO (which is on the web).

n5296s

[CraigJL]

....but he's having a vacation with his parents and does one or two training flights that are really just scenic flights

That is exactly the intention! Just thought I would clarify if there is any misunderstanding.

[Mickey Kaye]

How many hours in total are we talking for a flight over the Grand Canyon? Also do you get as good a view as you get with a dedicated tour operator such as papillon.

[IO540]

If anything were to later happen and it was found that the Instructor had given instruction (no matter how little) to a foreign national without all the paperwork completed - then the Instructor is liable and ultimately the FBO.

I would be very suprised if an informal flight, in US airspace, with an FAA CFI/CFII, where the only record in the whole universe of the flight exists in the "student's" logbook, where any FAA instructor is free to train on a freelance basis without having to do it through an FBO or any other institution (unlike the UK where ab initio PPL training has to be wholly via an FTO), would be a problem with either TSA or Visa. Even if they found out.

Huge numbers of instructional hours were and continue to be logged outside the USA, with the large numbers of FAA CFI/CFII instructors who live out there, who have no TSA approval, and nobody I know has ever reported any of this training as subsequently inadmissible towards any license or rating, US or any other, on the basis of the instructor not having been TSA approved.

I have met people over here who disagree with this and who collect US instructor names from peoples' logbooks for the purpose of reporting them to the TSA, but even this has never caused anybody any problems.

The real question is whether there is any point, in somebody who does not have a license of any sort, in logging a flight around the Grand Canyon, with an FAA instructor. The flight will mean exactly zilch towards any JAA license or rating. There are unusual cases like picking up a JAA PPL based on an ICAO PPL using the 100hr route, or validating an ICAO license into a European non-JAA one which lates becomes JAR-FCL (like e.g. Hungary used to do) but even these mean nothing unless this chap actually gets a whole US license first. Just the odd flight in the USA is worth zilch in Europe. It's just the warm feeling one gets, having a flight around the Grand Canyon in one's logbook, which I won't argue with (I try to log absolutely everything I can - just like everybody else ).