Flying over the runway is illegal?

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
oups.com...
I think we are talking about different things here. Go-arounds,
circling approaches, low pass for inspecting the runway, and slow
flight one foot above the runway are all well-intended useful
maneuvers. I do them, and I teach them. May be I misunderstood the
article, but the phrase "fly over" in the article implied a highspeed
pass over the runway. This is what I was referring to as unnecessary
and unsafe.

But you also claimed that the minimum safe altitude regulation applies. I
don't see how it does, if all the other low-altitude maneuvers are legal
("low pass for inspecting the runway", "slow flight one foot above the
runway", and a missed approach as part of a practice IFR approach in which a
landing was never intended as specific examples...the others you mentioned
could be argued as part of a landing).

"Careless or reckless" is, as we should all know, the catch-all the FAA uses
for pretty much any operation they don't like. It's no surprise that rule
might be invoked. When an accident happens as a result of a pilot doing
something out of the ordinary, the FAA will usually invoke that rule. But
that doesn't make a specific operation illegal; it mainly just makes
crashing during a specific operation illegal.

Given that low-pass approaches are clearly permitted in some situations, I
don't see how one can read the minimum altitude regulations in a way that
prohibits what this guy was doing. It's pretty clear from the FAA's
handling of operations that low-altitude flight in the vicinity of a runway
is allowed, even when the pilot never intended to land.

Pete