Correct time logging EASA
 

Hello all.

I have searched the forum and googled but can't find an answer to my question, does anyone have the answer or know where I can look for the definitive answer?

What is the correct and acceptable method of logging pilot time? by correct and acceptable, I mean to the UK authorities for the purpose of working through flight training and licence issuing etc.

Currently, under the Departure and Arrival columns in my logbook I am entering the take off time and the landing time, then in the Total Time Of Flight column I am entering the time of flight plus 0.2 for taxi.

E.g
Departure: 15:30 / Arrival: 16:00 / Total Time Of Flight: 0.7

Thanks in advance

'Flight time' (for airplanes) means the total time from the moment an aircraft first moves for the purpose of taking off until the moment it finally comes to rest at the end of the flight.
Hence, you can log the Departure time from 'brakes off' and Arrival time as 'final brakes on'.

It's common practice in the UK to log as Flight time the flight time between TO and LDG, plus 10mn ou 12 mn for taxi.
This does NOT seem legal to me:

Part FCL defines as ‘Flight time’:
for aeroplanes, touring motor gliders and powered-lift, it means the total time from the moment an aircraft first moves for the purpose of taking off until the moment it finally comes to rest at the end of the flight;

172510, yes same thoughts here which prompted my original question. I have asked a couple of flying instructors about this and both have said it is fine to log TO and LDG plus 0.2 for taxi, my concerns are; would the 0.2 be ok when progressing through modular flight training if the log book was inspected by anyone..

At my flight school we are taught to log hours from TO to LDG + 5 minutes, but the airport I fly out from isn't that big.
They log the same hours in their logbooks.

its very very easy.

You make a note of the time you move with the intention of flying.

Then you make a note of the time when you park up.

Then log the difference between the two.

Some flight schools do have agreements with the CAA to log take off to landing + a fixed amount due to occasional excessive waits at holding points at certain UK airports...

In the absence of that though it is just block time as recorded as others have stated.

it doesn't matter what the flight school thinks, you log brakes off for the intention of flight to brakes on. As per ANO and soon to be the new EASA rules.

Now it may well be that the CAA says that some of the time doesn't count towards training requirements. But the flight time logged is still the same.

How disappointing. Many want a far more difficult formula than that. :=

;)

Shy they never listen though.


Then its tears when they get their applications knocked back when upgrading to ATPL because of some rubbish a PPL instructor has told them. Then they find out its going to be another 12 months before its LPC time and they can do the LST again. Some of the forgein lads even pay for a special sim session to do the check in the LHS then get knocked back due to logging club check rides as PICUS. Then have to pay for another sim check. Just because they believed there PPL FI.

A flight school I do a little teaching at works on 10 minutes before take-off until 5 minutes after landing.

My understanding is that that is entirely to do with billing and should be treated as such. What goes in a pilot's logbook remains brakes-off to brakes-on, and should absolutely do so.

That said, the nature of the airfield is that rounded to the nearest 5 minutes, the two are almost always the same anyhow.

Exactly, in most cases it's to do with FTO/Club policies and always related to billing.
Some people then get used to calculate flight time and taxi time separately, which is just unnecessary.

Pilot time always starts when aircraft first moves under its own power.
I have always done it that way, for me its always brakes off to brakes on.
This will then accurately present your times for your log book.

EASA gives the definition of Flight Time - but does not indicate to what
degree of accuracy this must be recorded.

To the nearest minute, to the nearest five minutes and to the nearest
six minutes (1/10th of an hour) are, probably the most common.

I cannot, therefore, see any problem recording Flight Time from either
actual "Brakes Off to Brakes On" or as a notional "Brakes Off to Brakes On"
based on 5 (or 6) minutes added before the Take Off and after the
Landing times.

Personally I like "Take Off to Landing + 10" as, for aircraft charged by
Flight Time, it removes the financial incentive to rush the checks prior
to departure.

For the OP:
I would assume this will be picked up, and queried, by the CAA as
Flight Time must equal Arrival Time minus Departure Time.

It definitely doesn't say log notional times.

If they wanted you to log by adding 10mins at the beginning and 5 mins afterwards that's what they would tell you to do.

IR time
 

Note however, Instrument time is when the aircraft flies "only with reference to instruments". IR training time can not be more than airborne time.

Surely we should be logging the truth?

How about if you have a 20 minute delay at the holding point or spend lots of taxi time due to a runway change for example?

I reckon so fireflybob.

Its the most simple way of doing things to boot.

(1) Log time from brakes-off to brakes-on.

(2) Record and pay whatever is the deal with the aircraft owner.

(3) Log "sole reference to instruments", the time which was by sole reference to instruments. And IFR similarly.


I've never found keeping track of those several numbers particularly problematic. I'd venture that if anybody else can't, they probably are a bit intellectually challenged and shouldn't be allowed out of the circuit as they may not have the capacity to work out time, speed and distance either.

Thank you all for the feedback.
I found the latest cap 804 October 2013.
Brakes Off / Brakes On it is then!

We are logging time by means off the hobbs timer in my FTO.

The hobbs timer start counting from engine start till engine stop ( detects oil pressure), engine start is maybe 1 or 2 min before we start taxi, so ist kind like block hours.

The hobbs timers works in ticks of 6 min, sometimes 10 sec after engine start it does the first tick and i have 6 min "flown" on the other hand, some times you can be 5 min and 50 sec in the "tick" at engine stop ant dont have the full 6 min's , so the 5min 50 sec will not be logged in the book.

In avarage this will cancel each other more or less. Sometimes i have 6 min " extra" sometimes not :ok:

you definitely can't use hobbs for logging flight hours, its is linked too load factor of the engine and has nothing to do with time. Its not a valid way of logging time for log book purposes.

You can though run it to your advantage when hour building by running the engine just in the green arc. That means you will be billed for approximately 80% of what you actually fly in hours.

I think you might be confusing the tachometer with the hobbsmeter?

Aye true but your still not meant to use it.

What's so hard about taking the time you taxi and when you stop taxing after the flight?

Let's call that what it is. Fraud.

This FTO is encouraging its pilots to fraudulently log hours (or at-least minutes) to which they were not entitled.

Unless checks are incredibly gash, most flights include at-least 5 minutes of engine running time before, then after, the flight (particularly if you include a minute or so shutting everything down after turning the engine off when there's still power and oil pressure). So basically this is artificially adding 5 minutes (or whatever the figure is) to the legitimate time per flight.

Over a typical PPL course, that's 4 hours being logged to which the student wasn't entitled.

Fraud, and no amount of dressing it up or using thumbs-up smileys changes that.

Charging by Hobbs is perfectly legitimate. Logging by Hobbs almost never is.

The same in the FAA world
 

FARs, PART 1—DEFINITIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS

§1.1 General definitions.

Flight time means:

(1) Pilot time that commences when an aircraft moves under its own power for the purpose of flight and ends when the aircraft comes to rest after landing;

It's not rocket science but many people do seek out convoluted alternate methods for no apparent reason.

The idea of using flight time + x minutes is approved for when UK military pilots are translating their military logbooks into civil hours. Under military regs only flight time (t/o to ldg) is logged. The CAA allow specified additions to allow for taxy time.

For civvy pilots just log off blocks to on blocks. Simples. Any other method that the flying club uses for billing is irrelevant.

o well than every pilot in my FTO is frauding ?

As said flight time starts when the a/c starts moving under own power, and stops when parking the plane, as also said when intended to fly ! The hobbs timer starts counting from moment you start the engine, so maybe 1 min before taxi and stops when turning it off.
We can't just taxi around and log this as flight time or start the engine and stay stationary for 20 min. I had a solo flight on a day and i had a alternator failure when approaching the holding point at the runway, i taxied back and those " hours " are never been logged.

@ Genghis the Engineer;

don't point the finger to me, this is what i have been doing since day 1, if this is the wrong way doing it, than my FTO is in fault ! And btw a ppl course conducts 60 hrs in my FTO, so don't worry, i had enough training . And you are talking about a couples of minutes, maybe we can start logging down to the second to be sure ? And yes here is the smiley again :ok:

An FTO who tell students to fraudulently over-log hours, presumably also telling them to ignore the air law they've studied, do system checks with student pilots in under 60 seconds, inflate the minimum 45 hour PPL course to 60 hours.

Fascinating, as my old friend Dr Spock used to say.

In fact name the school and then hopefully there next inspection will sort this illegal nonsense out.

So just start the engine and allow the aircraft to roll forward a few feet before you commence all your checks - as soon as the aircraft has moved you can begin to log the time.

I think the list of schools would be so long you couldn't publish it.

Although most schools have in their manuals how it should be logged - most just use a good old Hobbs meter for both billing and record of flight time.

I'm not endorsing the behaviour in any way - it's just what happens at a lot more places than you think.

I wouldn't have thought so all the schools I have had contact with does chocks off to chocks on.

And as they all now have to submit ops manuals maybe this ****e will be stopped.

Where I teach we log brakes off to brakes on for logbook time - why is it so difficult?

Pay for taxi time?
 

To taxi an aircraft does not cost the school much, no engine time and hardly any fuel consumption, and yet most schools charges flying time for this.

One school, Southsweden.se, charges only for airborne time, and yet allows the student to log from blocks-off to blocks-on. Anybody knows more schools that does this?

for now on i will do it that way, starting the engine without holding the brakes, the planes moves (with intent to fly) a couple of centimeter, the hobbs timer started at engine start, so everybody is happy :D

I went to a certain FTO to do their integrated course around 10 years ago. We were told to log airborne to landing plus 10 minutes before and 5 minutes after. If I'd logged brakes on / off, I would not have been able to finish the course in the time provided.

Whilst I completely agree the correct legal method of logging times is brakes off to brakes on, I would argue that the CAA signed off this "approved" integrated course and have given tacit agreement to the former method. There must be literally thousands of us who "fraudulently" obtained our CPLs.

Interestingly, how many of us log block times, ie including pushback and engine start?

Hmmm.. This is getting interesting.

The school I attend in FL,USA (and all students Ive met on this airport coming in from other schools on x-country) log tachotime.

IF thats not the legal way of doing it, Im really scratching my head to what is going on..

I will also add: The flying club I started out with in Norway, logged the clock as we entered the runway and as we taxied off, then always added 10 min of taxi regardless of actual taxitime..

I gotta ask about this on monday. I shure dont like what Im reading in here..

The only thing you can do is check the air navigation order for your own country that you intend to stay with.

A lot of this comes from the years when it was ex-mil pilots who were the ops inspectors and flight examiners in the UK. In the British Mil you only ever logged your flight time ie when the rubber wasn't touching the runway. So all this business of when the aircraft first moved for the intention of flight was consider to be a load of rubbish. So they basically said yes to pretty much anything to do with it as the only thing they considered worthy was time in the air. And they certainly didn't want people to get credit for sitting at the hold for 20mins.

These rules of thumb pretty much work for 99% of the time. As long as nobody really looks at what's going on from outside.

Tacho time is particularly dodgy as its actually an engine load function. Which some allow you to use for maintenance scheduling. You can alter it quite significantly if you know what you are doing.

For example when I was doing my hour building I to was billed and filled in the techlog using tacho as per the schools instructions. But I used to fly long sectors at just inside the green arc slowly which gave a tacho load of about 0.8 (it goes up to 1.4 at 100% rpm or something like that). When ever in the US I had a local log book as I was warned that some US instructors liked to write there days thoughts all over your log book which you had to use for the rest of your life. So I had my JAR logbook separate and logged the US stuff as the school wanted and let the instructor scribble all over it and then wrote my true hours up in the JAR log book and threw away the US one after I had no requirement to have the bi-annual sign-off. If I had logged it that way and the FAA instructors had seen it they would have had a hissy fit.

The one lad that stupidly got caught with two log books got told he was in breach of private flying rules because he was logging "free" hours and that was a benefit in kind. Which is of course rubbish because he paid for everyone of them it just it worked out that the rate was lower than the school was charging. They are really not happy either when they learn that there scribbles are getting consigned to the bucket.

But the JAR log book was chocks off to chocks on. Which meant I only paid for 80% of the hours logged. So was about 1500 USD saving on hour building.

Same with the others courses back in the UK. For the course hours the school agreed method was used along with payment. But the actual hours logged were chocks on to chocks off. Training out of an international airport this meant that I didn't have to hour build 6.5 hours to get 200 hours for license issue or start my FI course and also got me over the magic 50hours twin time.

So by logging the time as per the ANO and not the school method I saved paying extra on over 10% of the hours required for CPL/IR/MEP/FI coming out with 225hours TT and 51 hours MEP. So 5 hours of which was very expensive twin time. So a saving of 4000 USD.

So its actually in your own advantage to log the hours properly.

The legal way of logging hours depends on your licence. ESASA licence means EASA rules, FAA licence means FAA rules.
You can be a PIC under FAA and not a PIC under EASA for the same flight.
etc.
Having 2 logbooks if you have 2 licences seems to be a good idea.

The techlog of the aircraft is another thing: it depends on the country of registration. To that respect I'm a little confused as it does not seem to be the same thing all over Europe. For instance if you fly a French registered aircraft, the rule is off block to on block on the techlog, just as the EASA rule for aircrews. In the UK it seems that only the actual airborne time is logged.

Part Q is still different. It's off block till on block or till the engines are out. I don't know if companies keep 2 sets of flight time logs for their pilots, part Q flight time and Aircrew flight time.

There are differences between EU and US definitions of when you can log it at-all, but I've yet to come across any country where civil aviation logs the actual duration of flights on any basis other than chock-to-chock.

I love aeroplanes billed on tacho, for all the reasons Jock says, but I'm still logging chock-to-chock.