Jim Burns wrote:

I feel no sympathy for Mr. Sheaffer. I feel a little for Mr. Martin, but he
too, even as a 30 hour student, should have flight planned the route and
made himself extremely familiar with it.

He should have?? He was a passenger. While it may be a good
learning exercise (assuming he was even at that stage of his training),
I wouldn't expect a passenger to go to that kind of effort. If this
was a training flight with an actual instructor, that would be a
different story.

When I go along for a ride as a passenger, I don't flight plan a
proposed route. I let the PIC take care of that.

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)