Originally Posted by
Good Business Sense
Logbooks are not required to be carried full stop because no regulation requires their carriage.
Yes, there is no explicit rule to carry your personal logbook, but only a weak sentenced 'present in a reasonable due time'. Now it depends on 'reasonable' and 'due' and that is a matter of situations. If you get an audit at your home base on your processes, you get away by saying thanks for the request and go gather what they asked for.
Experience from field ramp checks is different. If you are standing next to your aircraft, want to board with a fellow and get ramp checked, they will ask you to prove FCL.060 Recent Experience 90 days to document legally being allowed to take the passenger. Some checkers may accept an electronic version of the personal logbook, but many won't. As long as FCL does not explicitly allow electronic versions of logbook (electronic document according to common rules of bookkeeping - no alterations possible, non cheatable, certified as originals, all that complex stuff for electronic databases/programs) I stay paper.
And yes, I have been at ramp checks where they forbid the flight until landings without the passenger had been done in front of the checkers. Pretty nasty if you are on an IFR flight at a slotted airport, so I decided, even after carrying is not a legal requirement at first glance, to always have it ready to show in paper. Paper is something an ordinary ramp check agent is able to understand, not sure this is valid for electronic versions. Yes, I do keep an electronic copy for convenience and by treating the paper version as original I get free of the 'common bookkeeping standards'.