Yes, "instructor in command" syndrome is insidious.

On the one hand, I do not relinquish "in command" when i fly with an
instructor. If an instructor asks me to do something that is patently unsafe,
I will demur. However, in order to learn anything, I need to trust the
instructor - when he asks me to do something that is beyond my capability
(alone), he =is= there to bail me out. How else am I going to learn to fly
upside down, or in a cloud, or with the nose wheel in the back? But even when
a situation may not be beyond me, an instructor isn't just a passenger. He's
more like a required crewmember, and we need to fly as a team.

This should be understood. I usually treat it as understood. I'm not sure,
upon reflection, how well my understanding would match the instructor's should
we get into a situation.

For example, a passenger pulls the power off and says you lost your engine,
what do you do? If it were me, I wouldn't set up a glide, pick a field, and go
through my emergency checklist. I would smack the passenger one good, and
shove the lever back forward. Then I would contemplate the juxtaposition of
91.3 against 91.15.

An instructor does the same thing, it's a whole different story. As it turned
out, we were over a grass strip. I set up the proper approach, went through
the proper checklist procedures, and made an approach. 200 feet above the
ground the instructor did =not= say I had the field made and to go around. He
said go ahead and land it. Well, I'd never landed at a grass strip before
(renters are prohibited from doing so). I mentioned this and he replied
(correctly) that it only applies without an instructor - it was ok to land on
grass with him in the plane. Ok, cool! I did a nice landing, we went around
and did it several more times, then went home. I learned something and got
some nice grass experience (though being winter it wasn't quite the same).

Later on I looked up the airport we had landed at in the AF/D and found out it
was closed to transients in winter.

So, whose bad? Pilot in command (me) or instructor in command syndrome? What
would you have done? Why?

Jose




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