I lost my logbook, now what?
August 18th, 2008 | 
Author: I just received an email from Scott, asking about what to do when you lose your logbook:
In previous years I have accumulated approx. 30 to 35 hours in student training in the air, either with my instructors or by myself, Unfortunately I have lost my log book. What should I do ? Both of my instructors are still in my area, can they help?
Hi Scott. Sorry to hear about your logbook, that stinks. As a pilot, I have two recurring nightmares. The first one is where I totally forget about a scheduled flight until about an hour after it is supposed to leave and the second nightmare is losing my logbook. You are in a great position in that you have less than 40 hours accumulated so it won’t be nearly the chore it could have been, if say you had like 4,000 hours.
There are several ways to copy your logbook once it has been lost or destroyed by using other paper records of the flights, no matter what stage you are in your flying career.
1) Your flight Instructors. Your flight instructors will have their own personal logbook that has records of the flights that you flew with them. You could ask your flight instructors for copies of the pages where you flew together. You could easily use that in a new logbook.
2) Your flight school. The flight school should have both financial records and aircraft records of the flights that you lost. You should contact the flight school and ask for a copy of the aircraft hobbs records. Usually the hobbs will record the name of the instructor and student so it should be pretty simple to track down these records if you have a general idea of when you flew.
3) Canceled Checks. I remember one of my flight students would jot down the flight time and aircraft registration number in the notes portion of his check. If something would have happened to his records, it would have been a simple matter of flipping through some old checks to duplicate his logbook.
4) FAA Form 8710. When you go to take your checkride you will fill out a form 8710 which is basically your airman application form. Near the bottom of the form you will fill in a table that documents your flight hours and experience. You can easily duplicate a logbook from this information. In fact, that is one of the purposes of that form.
5) Company Records. If you are a professional pilot you can use company records to help duplicate your logbook. I often make records of the company forms I use in the aircraft and keep them handy in the event something would happen to my logbook.
6) Electronic Backup. There are many options when it comes to logbook software and online pilot logbooks. One of the best electronic logbook programs is Logbook Pro by NC Software. One of the nice things about Logbook Pro is being able to export to many different formats for both printing and storing.
Good luck Scott with your logbook. I hope that you continue your training and that you find a solution to help prevent this in the future. Be sure to…
Fly Safe.
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I too have nightmares that include losing my logbook. Is it better to have photocopies than just an electronic copy? I was not sure if it was important for any FAA reasons to have proof of CFI signatures and signoffs.
I think the signatures are important to the FAA for checkrides and the like. Once you take the checkride for a particular rating or certificate, I think you would be ok for backing things up electronically. Even with the electronic you could have your instructor sign that. Logbook Pro creates printout that has looks just like a traditional logbook and has room for instructor signatures, endorsements and the like.
Good point though and another way to backup your logbook….make a photocopy!
Thanks for that blog posts and the suggestions regarding electronic backups. I think thats what I need to do…! Just in case…
Glad I could help Stephen!
So I just started instructing for a new company. One of my students had lost his logbook a while ago and has a few hours. The old instructor is gone… is there anything I can do?
Dan,
The first thing that I would try and do is to track down the Hobbs record for the airplane(s) your student used. It should list the student / instructor.
If that doesn’t work, I would approach the accounting dept for the flight school / FBO. Most of the time when the FBO cashier swipes the credit card they will put the Tail Number of the airplane in and how many hours.
It might take some “outside-the-box” thinking, but when an airplane flies a tree dies right? So records of those flights must be somewhere!
Good luck.
It doesn’t help if you already lost your logbook, but on the Mac side of things LogTen Pro is probably the best logbook app out there, and it will sync with an iPhone version of itself as well.