The orignal question was posed in respect of a Baron 58. In the old days of charter we just used to log off chocks to on chocks. Then after shut down the tach time was entered in the aircraft logbook, to be checked by the next pilot before any subsequent flight.
In somewhat larger machines, and depending upon operator, the take off to touch down times are entered in the aircraft technical log to assist engineering in the compilation of their highly sophisticated maintainance calculations.
Off chocks to on chocks was what went in the pilots' log books and in the company journey log as well as the airborne times.
In practice one has to admit that after a long hard six sector day banging through the northern winters, the on chock time was often just rounded up to the nearest five minutes or so to make the final, agonizing additions required that much easier. It all evened out in the long run.
Having recently rewritten SA Air Law and Procedures I am pleased to say that I do not have my notes with me and so cannot check the precise definitions. Have to say though that I found the new (to me who previously wrote Air Law in 1976) syllabus to be emminently sensible and of much more practical use that the old one which was really nothing more than a ghastly memory exercise,
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Flight Duty Time.
Usually in one's limited experience the time used to calculate the duty time in respect of calculating subsequent rest periods.
It depends rather on the company and by all accounts some, such as in India are rather extracting the last juiceical drop.
Generally it was one hour or forty five minutes before scheduled airborne time to half an hour after actual on chocks time at the end of one's final flight of the day.
