NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
Flight Instructor reported having to strike a student to release the flight controls during takeoff after the student attempted to stop the aircraft from rotating and did not respond to verbal commands from the instructor to release the controls.
What is ASRS?
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is NASA's voluntary, confidential, non- punitive incident-reporting system, established 1976. Pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance technicians file reports describing safety- relevant events. NASA de-identifies every report before adding it to the public database. Reports are not investigated by NASA, the FAA, or the NTSB — they represent the reporter's perspective.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim from the de-identified NASA record. First-person account by the
reporter. NASA strips identifying details (names, company, specific time);
anonymization placeholders are ZZZ,
X, Y.
I the instructor was to take Person X for a refresher flight as he was said to have previously held a Private Pilot certificate. Upon start up and taxi, Person X took questionable action to attempt to start the airplane as well as try to steer the Cessna 152 by use of yolk as if it were a steering wheel. After discussing with Person X that I would be in control of the aircraft and would use positive exchange of controls, I was solely controlling the aircraft while Person X viewed from the left seat. As I positioned the aircraft on Runway XX I advanced power to takeoff and talked through the procedure for Person X to listen. Halfway down the runway, Person X (without permission) positioned his hands on the controls of the aircraft and held the airplane in a position that I was unable to rotate, after several shouts "LET GO, LET GO, LET GO NOW", my only final action to recover control was to strike Person X to release the controls as we did not have sufficient runway to abort the takeoff. I was able to regain control and climbout to the East where I took time to regroup and kept Person X off the controls. We returned to the airport and discussed the situation. Person X is not welcome to come back for another flight as I find him unfit and dangerous for flight.
NASA classification — Anomalies
- Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event
- Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural
- Inflight Event / Encounter
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Human Factors
- Primary Problem
- Human Factors
ASRS reports are voluntarily submitted, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective. The presence of reports on a topic cannot be used to infer prevalence in the National Airspace System. The authoritative source is the NASA ASRS Database Online at asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗.