Cross Country Time – Nuanced

12 Answers

1. 
   

   
   

   Wes Beard on Jan 15, 2014

   Yes and yes.

   I doesn’t matter what you do enroure or how many touch and goes you do before leaving airport A. The only thing that matters is that you land at Airport B.

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2. 
   

   
   

   Mark Kolber on Jan 15, 2014

   I agree with Wes but only up to a point. That point is when what you do becomes ridiculous. There’s no real rule about this other than a general principle that there is ultimately a test of what is reasonable. And when it become unreasonable, there will be a problem.

   Make that 40 touch and goes tripling your flight time and I would not be surprised to see the FAA come up with an interpretation that not all of it could be used to meet a xc requirement.

   So the first question really is, “do you have any qualms about it?” Do you feel that the time was valuable to hone xc skills and knowledge? Or would you look at the logbook of a student who did it and at some point say to yourself, “hmmm, here is someone trying to get away without flying another xc”?

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3. 
   

   
   

   Perezam on Jan 15, 2014

   Just to clarify, I already have my PPL. I understand your points and agree this can easily get abused. Personally I feel it did hone my skills and knowledge. I had not flown in 2 months and there was some good crosswind landings as well as some rust I needed to knock off especially since both airports only had options to land with a stuff crosswind.

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4. 
   

   
   

   John D Collins on Jan 16, 2014

   Any flight where you land at a different airport than you depart from is a cross country flight and may be logged as cross country. The distance issue only comes in effect if you are crediting a particular cross country flight towards meeting an experience or training requirement, it must also meet the distance requirement.

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5. 
   

   
   

   Mark Kolber on Jan 16, 2014

   Perezam, I understood you already had your private, but that you were still asking about the xcs that counted for certificates and ratings that require hours of xc using the 50+ standard.

   Truthfully, the FAA will probably never have an opportunity to address the question unless someone seriously abuses or decides to ask the Chief Ciunsel one of those questions that is better left unasked.

   But as an instructor, I can see so many other ways to add time to a xc flight with xc tasks (which btw I think do include some multiple landings at another airport) which is the point of every xc requirement I am aware of.

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6. 
   

   
   

   perezam on Jan 16, 2014

   Thanks for the responses. My goal was/is not to “game” the regs to build XC time at the expense of actually flying the XC time. Realized when I landed that I had 1.9 Hobbs time and thought to myself, the only “real” XC portion applicable to ratings was about 1.0-1.1 hobbs time. Was debating if I should put the 1.9 in hobbs for XC or just use the 1.1. Mark, to your point, the instructors here know how far away Airport B is and can look and raise an eyebrow to how long it to get there and back.

   I am not purposely doing slow flight from A to B just to increase the hours, again to “game” the regs. Fully understand and appreciate that to truly build XC time (and become a better pilot) its better to venture to unknown airports preferably more than 50NM and get different experiences.

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7. 
   

   
   

   Wes Beard on Jan 16, 2014

   §61.1 defines what a cross country is and when it can be used for different certificates and ratings.

   Did your flight involve the use of dead reckoning, pilotage, electronic navigation aids, radio aids, or other navigation systems to navigate to the landing point? Let me paraphrase, did you get lost and decided to set down at an airport? If you weren’t lost, you are guaranteed to use one of those methods and it can be counted as cross country time.

   If the straight line distance from the original point of departure is more than 50NM then that cross country time can be counted for a new certificate or rating.

   What I find interesting is that an ATP candidate does not have a requirement to land just that they travel greater than 50NM. Again, if you weren’t lost then you used some method of pilotage, dead reckoning or radio navigation.

   The regulation does not state that you must be at cruising speed or that you have to go directly there. You could do whatever you want as long as you do not get lost. It also doesn’t state you have to be doing cross country tasks, whatever those are.

   You could circle a landmark and take pictures. Would you not slow down and perform a turn around a point? Perhaps you might go into slow flight to take those pictures. Maybe a steep(er) turn would provide a better picture. Doesn’t matter. Most would agree those are not cross country tasks but you still log that time as cross country on your flight.

   I have no qualms with logging the whole 1.9 hours as cross country time and the regulations do not either.

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8. 
   

   
   

   Mark Kolber on Jan 16, 2014

   You could circle a landmark and take pictures. Would you not slow down and perform a turn around a point? Perhaps you might go into slow flight to take those pictures. Maybe a steep(er) turn would provide a better picture. Doesn’t matter. Most would agree those are not cross country tasks but you still log that time as cross country on your flight.

   I would not agree at all that those are not xc tasks. I think the sightseeing, diversion, and return to your flight path are definitely xc tasks.

   Otoh, I would argue spending 2 hours in your local practice area doing maneuvers might be a problem and that 10 touch and goes at your home base before you leave have absolutely nothing to do with xc flight.

   Point is that what I see as a possible dividing line isn’t susceptible of an exact definition. More of “you know it when you see it.” It wouldn’t be the first time. And based on how the FAA interprets makes up rules to fit policy, I wouldn’t want to see a test case.

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9. 
   

   
   

   LTCTerry on Jan 16, 2014

   My opinion:

   If you file IFR fly for an hour with twelve minutes in the clouds, you get 0.2 actual IFR, not 1.0 just because part of it was in the soup. If you fly two hours split evenly across sunset, you don’t get to count 2.0 as night…

   If you did touch and goes, stopped for lunch, and then took off to airport B, you’d have some local time and some cross country time. Easy.

   If you did not navigate to another airport between takeoff and touchdown, you did not go cross country. XC is the time from the last takeoff at A to the first (only?) landing at B: 1.9 hours PIC/Day/Total and X.Y hours cross country.

   Any fiddling around enroute still requires keeping track of location, heading to destination, etc. and – I think – reasonably counts as XC – just not the part(s) where you remained a mile from the airport.

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10. 
    

    
    

    John D Collins on Jan 17, 2014

    LTCTerry,

    Your opinion is tougher than the regulations, but I have no problem with someone following your logging advice for cross countries. There isn’t a regulatory requirement that specifies “If you did not navigate to another airport between takeoff and touchdown, you did not go cross country. XC is the time from the last takeoff at A to the first (only?) landing at B”. If the FAA wanted to include that in their regulation, they would have. What they actually state is:

    “(C) That includes a landing at a point other than the point of departure; and

    (D) That involves the use of dead reckoning, pilotage, electronic navigation aids, radio aids, or other navigation systems to navigate to the landing point.”

    This wording does not preclude multiple takeoff and landings at either airport, but only requires that “a landing” at a point other than the point of departure. It also requires the use of one of the methods of navigation to the landing airport.

    One other observation, night time is defined in the regulations as:

    “Night means the time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as published in the Air Almanac, converted to local time.”

    Night starts roughly a half hour past sunset in most of the US and ends about a half hour before sunrise. This definition is used for logging. The takeoffs and landings required for night currency for carrying passengers, must be accomplished using a different criteria, between one hour after sunset to one hour before sunrise. The same criteria is used for when a pilot can carry passengers at night, so there is about a half hour window between night and 1 hour after sunset that a pilot may carry passengers legally, log the time as night, and not be night current.

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11. 
    

    
    

    Wes Beard on Jan 17, 2014

    As John pointed out, there is a specific definition of night time and it must be used when logging flight time at night.

    There is also a very specific definition for IFR conditions. Reference §1.1 “IFR conditions means weather conditions below the minimum for flight under visual flight rules.” If you are in IFR conditions then you should log actual instrument time and only that time you are in less than VFR conditions.

    My point is there are specific definitions for when you log something in a column and when you don’t. We have already touched on that definition for logging XC time.

    LTCTerry stated, “If you did touch and goes, stopped for lunch, and then took off to airport B, you’d have some local time and some cross country time. Easy.” If the intention for the 1st flight was to do pattern work and then you stopped the airplane to have lunch that should not be counted as XC time. The 2nd flight to another airport would be XC time and the logbook should have two entries made; one for each flight. The second flight XC time should be the same as the total flight time.

    Why is that? §1.1 Flight time means 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… and Pilot time is defined in §61.1.

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12. 
    

    
    

    Dave Ballard on Feb 27, 2017

    Need some clarification. I am working on my instrument rating. I am getting conflicting guidance from two CFII’s on XC time. One says you must at least perform a touch and go the other says an instrument low approach to a missed hold under the hood also counts. All are over 50 NM. In the string of this question (Wes Beard) portion states it is not a requirement to actually land for and ATP certificate.

    Can my low approaches to missed count as XC time?

    Dave

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