On the subject of logging of flight time. While flight time is required legally to be logged, does anyone know if you legally have to log instrument flight time? Why I ask this, is that personally I only log instrument flight time if IMC and I am actually hand flying the aircraft. The CAO says you can log autopilot time if in IMC. I know of pilots who have logged thousands of hours of autopilot IMC time which, although legal, does seem a little off-side.
There are others, who, having logged enough IMC instrument flight time to keep the Feds happy (on autopilot of course) , no longer can be bothered to log I/F time. In fact, "Stick me down for .5 I/F time" is a not uncommon phrase on the flight deck when the paperwork is being completed at the end of a flight and the flight was in CAVOK at 35,000 ft
Assuming they are entitled to log i/f time under the conditions required, is it illegal NOT to log it? Especially as it cannot be proven?
It used to be the rule that instrument flight time could only be logged if you were manually flying in IMC. That became a reasonably accurate yardstick of instrument flying experience provided it was logged honestly.
Then ICAO approved the monitoring of the autopilot in IMC as loggable instrument flight time, with Australia quickly following suit.
Does anyone know why ICAO brought in the change? It sure negated the whole point of logging of instrument flight time as a measure of IMC experience. Logging of autopilot time in IMC while eating your dinner and chatting up the hostie means SFA in terms of I/F experience now, don't you think?