Safety Pilot Question

natid82

Always learning
Hello fellow pilots,
Yesterday, I flew with a friend of mine (we are both CFIIs). He was under the foggles working on instrument approaches, I was the safety pilot. (IFR flight plan)
We were cleared to descend from 5000 to 3000. My friend who was PIC for the flight did not set the autopilot correctly and the airplane descends past 3000.
The controller comes on and asks us what our altitude. The PIC says "2500, correcting", and tries to figure out the AP. 9 seconds after we get another call "climb to 3000 please". I immediately take over, deactivate the AP, and start a climb. We don't hear any further prompts and until the controller cleared us for the approach.

When being handed over to the next controller, the PIC apologizes, and the controller replied with "no problem, good night".

The only reason I bring it up, is because my friend asked me to file the flight plan, so it is my name on it. We were not given any numbers to call from that specific controller. I did file a NASA ASRS report today.

Your thoughts are welcomed! For some reason I still feel paranoid about the whole thing.
 
If you weren’t given a number to call then I wouldn’t lose any sleep over the incident. Honest mistakes like that happen and usually it’s treated as a no harm no foul.
 
There are no guarantees, but "No problem, have a good night," as opposed to "possible pilot deviation; suggest you call..." is a very strong signal there will be no follow up.

Relax.
 
These things happen. So long as your descent didn’t cause a loss of sep with another aircraft no ones going to bother reporting anything.
 
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