Fatal Cessna 150 accident- "Flight Instructor" had no certificate

The student's father was a partner in the corp that owned the airplane, so the arrangement seems more like a casual rental or even loaner. That would leave the student to go out and find his own instructor, and a new student might not be thorough in checking credentials.

Of course, even in that case, there are interesting questions. When logging dual received, the instructor should be signing that line with his name, instructor cert #, and cert expiration date. So in this hypothetical scenario, the "instructor" would have to either simply fail to do such a thing (thereby rendering the logged time worthless) or else make up a number and expiration date.

Neither of those seem particularly likely - especially for a kid whose father is in the flying business and would almost certainly know better. So I wonder if the kid wasn't necessarily doing formalized training, but instead just flying casually with an acquaintance in order to get some familiarity with things.

That seems odd too though...but I'm not familiar with the concept of taking flying lessons to "help qualify for special forces." I guess it depends on what's actually needed to help qualify - is it just general aviation knowledge, or actual flight experience?

So it's still an odd situation no matter how I try and look at it. The full NTSB report may be educational when it comes out...