DPEs: how firm is the >50NM rule? Would distances of 49.5NM be rounded up?

MauleSkinner said:
Not caring and not being able to do anything about it are two different things.
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Except they can do something about it. A CFI applicant must demonstrate instructional knowledge and todays CFI applicants don’t have it.
 
Clip4 said:
Except they can do something about it. A CFI applicant must demonstrate instructional knowledge and todays CFI applicants don’t have it.
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You obviously have no concept of how many people choose to operate well below the level they demonstrate on checkrides.
 
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BMan said:
Still early in my training, but I'm surprised it's only 50nm.
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Don't worry, there is a longer one before you can take the private checkride.

"One solo cross country flight of 150 nautical miles total distance, with full-stop landings at three points, and one segment of the flight consisting of a straight-line distance of more than 50 nautical miles between the takeoff and landing locations"​

The 50 allows for something shorter while still requiring the same navigation skills. That's particularly helpful for the dual cross countries where you will be paying for both airplane and instructor. The longer one is really the same navigation-wise, but can also involve extended planning and more advanced decision-making, even though, as a round robin, its not really much different, although there are more things to choose from.

The problem with "is 49.9 OK?" is usually the loss of experience. that's not necessarily the case with the OP since they seem to be looking at routes that deal with the Atlanta Bravo and one contemplates a landing at a busy Delta. But how easy to do those with one other airport added to bring up the total? I don't know what airport the OP is based at (and am wondering, why so many different starting points?) but I look at the area where the OP is planning the flight and I say, "wow! Look at all the great choices!"
 
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MauleSkinner said:
You obviously have no concept of how many people choose to operate well below the level they demonstrate on checkrides.
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When you ask a few questions and determine they have no base knowledge it is easy to determine they level they were required to demonstrate was too low. The questions are not all that tough.
 
Clip4 said:
When you ask a few questions and determine they have no base knowledge it is easy to determine they level they were required to demonstrate was too low. The questions are not all that tough.
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so there is absolutely no loss of knowledge after a test? Nobody studies up for the test and then load sheds afterwards?
 
MauleSkinner said:
I’ve seen a lot worse.
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We all have. @Clip4 is just old. Whining about the younger generation is a sure sign. Don't worry, the prior generation said the same things about him too. And the new crop will say it about the next. It's been happening for thousands of years and repeated without exception.
 
midlifeflyer said:
We all have. @Clip4 is just old. Whining about the younger generation is a sure sign. Don't worry, the prior generation said the same things about him too. And the new crop will say it about the next. It's been happening for thousands of years and repeated without exception.
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Yep. Pilots today are far worse than decades ago, which is the only way to explain why the GA accident rate is doing down............
 
JackFliesGA said:
Hi everyone! I am planning my first solo cross country, and there is one airfield that is 49.5 miles away from my home airport as measured from the geographic centers of both airports.

Would KLZU → KTOC be accepted by a DPE as a cross-country?

I figure KAHN → KPDK at 48.9 NM is not acceptable, but what about something like KRYY→6A2 at 49.8NM?
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50 is 50. Not “50ish” or “about 50”. It’s a hard “at least 50” so I would just comply and makes things much easier for yourself.
 
Fracpilot said:
50 is 50. Not “50ish” or “about 50”. It’s a hard “at least 50” so I would just comply and makes things much easier for yourself.
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I thought it was a hard "more than 50."
 
Clip4 said:
Like you forgot the difference between a forward and side slip?
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WDD said:
Yep. Pilots today are far worse than decades ago, which is the only way to explain why the GA accident rate is doing down............
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Improved technology and changes to the FAA training requirements are why accident rates have decreased. The minimalist I got to just do enough to get to the airlines CFI might change that safety trend. You might be seeing it today with increased runway incursions.
 
midlifeflyer said:
The rule is easy. And reading is fundamental. Making the words up yourself or trying to fudge around it is the hard thing.
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I really don't think this was born out of any sort of effort to skirt the bare minimums, or on any sort of gross understanding..... I think it was probably more of a thought experiment. I get thoughts like this sometimes....wondering maybe "why 50, and not 49?", etc....
I don't get annoyed by them....I view it as not so much a direct question needing a specific answer (which might seem like an annoying stupid question to some)... but I think of it more like a sittin' around the campfire small talk trivia question....
and in the process I might come accross something like this, which may not have been on the front of my mind before....
www.pilotsofamerica.com

Distance To The Horizon

Ever wonder how far is the horizon when flying? AGL / Horizon Mile Away 1,000 = 38.71 2,000 = 54.76 3,000 = 66.10 4,000 = 77.44 5,000 = 85.45925 6,000 = 93.4785 7,000 = 101.49775 8,000 = 109.517 9,000 = 117.53625
www.pilotsofamerica.com www.pilotsofamerica.com
 
Brad W said:
I really don't think this was born out of any sort of effort to skirt the bare minimums, or on any sort of gross understanding..... I think it was probably more of a thought experiment. I get thoughts like this sometimes....wondering maybe "why 50, and not 49?", etc....
I don't get annoyed by them....I view it as not so much a direct question needing a specific answer (which might seem like an annoying stupid question to some)... but I think of it more like a sittin' around the campfire small talk trivia question....
and in the process I might come accross something like this, which may not have been on the front of my mind before....
www.pilotsofamerica.com

Distance To The Horizon

Ever wonder how far is the horizon when flying? AGL / Horizon Mile Away 1,000 = 38.71 2,000 = 54.76 3,000 = 66.10 4,000 = 77.44 5,000 = 85.45925 6,000 = 93.4785 7,000 = 101.49775 8,000 = 109.517 9,000 = 117.53625
www.pilotsofamerica.com www.pilotsofamerica.com
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It's not about skirting the rules. It's about reading them.

"Why is it 50 and not 49 (or 490)" is a good question asking about policy decisions.
"Can I morph 49 into being 50" asks about rounding. Still a legitimate question, but it's making up the rule.
"Can I morph 49 into being "more than 50" requires both reading and comprehension to realize the answer is no.

Thought experiment: It's not completely consistent but I wonder whether the repeated use of "more than" language, sometimes combined with "at least"

"That includes a point of landing that was at least a straight-line distance of more than 50 nautical miles from the original point of departure;"​
​
was intended to avoid the rounding question.
 
midlifeflyer said:
Thought experiment: It's not completely consistent but I wonder whether the repeated use of "more than" language, sometimes combined with "at least"

"That includes a point of landing that was at least a straight-line distance of more than 50 nautical miles from the original point of departure;"​
​
was intended to avoid the rounding question.
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On the other hand, the fact that "at least" and "more than" both appear in that clause probably contributes to some people's misremembering what it says.

By the way, the use of the phrase "straight-line distance" instead of "great-circle distance" could be an opportunity for the mischievous among us to point out that the former is shorter than the latter, but I haven't gone to the trouble of calculating whether the chord is sufficiently shorter than the segment of the circumference to matter. :devil:
 
I’ve argued this a few times. DPE checks with ForeFlight, it says 50. Put a old sectional on that table and a plotter and you get about 50.5 lol….
 
Skymac said:
I’ve argued this a few times. DPE checks with ForeFlight, it says 50. Put a old sectional on that table and a plotter and you get about 50.5 lol….
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There's no need to argue if we just choose airports well outside 50. I don't think @JackFliesGA told us which airport is home base (mentioned two different starting points). If it's LZU, here's a list of public airports with paved runways at least 3000' long between 50 and 75 nm away.
1693826635933.png

There's a flip side discussion too. We've seen it. 61.109 also requires 5 hours cross country time, so we not only try to morph 49.6 to 50.1, but we do 18 touch and goes there to build up the time instead of flying to an airport another 10 minutes away.

Unless you happen to live somewhere with no options, I never understood either "I don't really want to go anywhere" discussion.
 
midlifeflyer said:
There's no need to argue if we just choose airports well outside 50. I don't think @JackFliesGA told us which airport is home base (mentioned two different starting points). If it's LZU, here's a list of public airports with paved runways at least 3000' long between 50 and 75 nm away.
View attachment 120295

There's a flip side discussion too. We've seen it. 61.109 also requires 5 hours cross country time, so we not only try to morph 49.6 to 50.1, but we do 18 touch and goes there to build up the time instead of flying to an airport another 10 minutes away.

Unless you happen to live somewhere with no options, I never understood either "I don't really want to go anywhere" discussion.
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The FAA has no issue with XCs in a J3 cub to complete 5 hours of XC time and you are worried about the student adding some landings in a 172?
 
If higher than 12.5 MSL, even a student pilot can go across ATL airspace.
 
Clip4 said:
The FAA has no issue with XCs in a J3 cub to complete 5 hours of XC time and you are worried about the student adding some landings in a 172?
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Best way to get instructional knowledge of cross country navigation is to do touch and goes for an hour?
 
Clip4 said:
The FAA has no issue with XCs in a J3 cub to complete 5 hours of XC time and you are worried about the student adding some landings in a 172?
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No. I don't think that's what I said. I thought I said

so we not only try to morph 49.6 to 50.1, but we do 18 touch and goes there
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IOW, I'm worried about the attitude that leads a student to add a bunch of landings in a 172 at an airport maybe >50NM away instead of flying an airport another 10 minutes away. Besides, there are far better things to do on a cross country that hang out for a half hour in a traffic pattern.

It's not about the rule. Heck, according to the rule you don't need to go more than 26 NM away, but I wouldn't sign off on it.
 
midlifeflyer said:
No. I don't think that's what I said. I thought I said



IOW, I'm worried about the attitude that leads a student to add a bunch of landings in a 172 at an airport maybe >50NM away instead of flying an airport another 10 minutes away. Besides, there are far better things to do on a cross country that hang out for a half hour in a traffic pattern.

It's not about the rule. Heck, according to the rule you don't need to go more than 26 NM away, but I wouldn't sign off on it.
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Is it the student?

Even Part 61 it is the CFI that establishes the training syllabus. Use a syllabus a with a minimum of 8 hours XC - problem solved.

I am a proponent of having my students practice normal, short and soft procedures at each point away from departure. At least they are practicing at airport other than home and another airport.
 
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I heard someone once say, “You can have a hundred hours of experience, or you can have one hour of experience a hundred times.”

I tried going places I’d never been, and that meant getting away from home by well more than 50nm.
 
I took my private check ride in a different part of the country from where I did most of my training. My first solo XC route was a very popular first solo XC route for my home airport and was a whisker over 50nm. All the DPEs in THAT neck of the woods knew it.

Now, the check ride was nowhere near that airport and the DPE was not familiar with the route. He wasn’t convinced because FF said the route was 50nm and the regs say more than 50. While I had charts for the area in which I was doing my check ride, I no longer had a chart for that XC route. It got tense for a bit. I finally showed him that a round trip route was 101 nm on FF and that was acceptable. Whew.

When I did my long XC for commercial, I flew the other way 10nm, logged that flight. Then few the 260nm to the next field just to be sure.
 
JackFliesGA said:
TL;DR is have a professional attitude and go above and beyond. Splitting hairs about 0.2NM is not what a DPE wants to do. They want to see you well beyond compliant of regulations.

oh hehe, I just saw the email with your original reply. lol.
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Doh! Cheers and happy aviating. F70 is a cool airport near us but it's just under the 50 nautical miles but by a wide enough margin that it's not something like 0.2nm.. too bad because it means people have to go to HMT which in my opinion is a less interesting place
 
Brad W said:
but I think of it more like a sittin' around the campfire small talk trivia question.... and in the process I might come accross something like this, which may not have been on the front of my mind before....
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That's what I thought this forum could be: sitting around the World Wide Campfire telling stories and wondering about things. The range of tones in the responses pretty well matches the split between wonderers and rule-followers.

This question actually came up with a friend I was riding with on a planned cross-country KLZU KTOC KDZJ (52.5NM from KLZU) before heading back. We decided not to go to Blairsville, which is in a valley in the Appalachia due to ground hugging clouds we could see from the air, and a scattered layer just 1500ft above the highest peaks. despite the TAF showing 6SM SCT 050. My friend was sad that TOC was just shy of 50NM of LZU, and I thought, well if we count the distance between the numbers of RWY7 at LZU and the numbers at RWY 21 at TOC, its ~50.4NM per Google Earth. So that made me wonder, how is that distance even measured, and if a DPE would accept that the logbook. My friend ultimately didn't count it ultimately, it made for an interesting question.

/end campfire story/

midlifeflyer said:
I don't think @JackFliesGA told us which airport is home base (mentioned two different starting points). If it's LZU, here's a list of public airports with paved runways at least 3000' long between 50 and 75 nm away.

There's a flip side discussion too. We've seen it. 61.109 also requires 5 hours cross country time, so we not only try to morph 49.6 to 50.1, but we do 18 touch and goes there to build up the time instead of flying to an airport another 10 minutes away.
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Yup, my home base is LZU. That AirNav tool is pretty handy. I used a range ring on Google Earth and then used SkyVector, Foreflight, Garmin Pilot, to check the distances for those fields really close to the circle I drew.

In my XC training I asked me instructor do a flight with me to KMLJ so I could use that to satisfy the >50NM requirement. I liked flying over a lake and seeing all the little boats.

My friend riding along took this photo from the back seat.
123_1.jpeg

I definitely am grateful for the options I have here Northeast of Atlanta.

Tocoa has a really well maintained and clean FBO by the way. Definitely want to go back there, get a view of Tallulah Gorge from the air, and sit on those lazy boy couches :)
 
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JackFliesGA said:
This question actually came up with a friend I was riding with on a planned cross-country KLZU KTOC KDZJ (52.5NM from KLZU) before heading back. We decided not to go to Blairsville, which is in a valley in the Appalachia due to ground hugging clouds we could see from the air, and a scattered layer just 1500ft above the highest peaks. despite the TAF showing 6SM SCT 050. My friend was sad that TOC was just shy of 50NM of LZU, and I thought, well if we count the distance between the numbers of RWY7 at LZU and the numbers at RWY 21 at TOC, its ~50.4NM per Google Earth. So that made me wonder, how is that distance even measured, and if a DPE would accept that the logbook. My friend ultimately didn't count it ultimately, it made for an interesting question.
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My guess is that using the airport reference point (ARP) would be easy to defend if a question came up.

This document explains how the ARP is calculated, beginning on page 449:

 
brcase said:
Just had a applicant headed for an instrument check ride that was 25 hours short on his cross country time because much of what he logged as cross country didn't include a landing 50nm from the original airport. Fortunately this error was caught prior to going the check ride, but is a significant setback in getting his instrument rating.
So yes understanding the requirements is important.


Brian
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I have Instrument students that I have to take on XC flights just to build time. We don’t file, but do work on clearances, re-routes, etc, as they have trouble getting to 50 hours XC. Of course they get 4 or 5 on the real IR XC as we generally go from Reno over the Sierras or to Oregon/Idaho to get some new places where they have not memorized the approaches.
 
RussR said:
I wonder if, when faced with being turned down due to a 49.9 NM XC, any student has ever mentioned that the regulations don't say the distance is measured between the airport reference points.

Rather, the flight has to be 50 NM between the point of departure and the point of landing (and other similar statements in the various sections).

So, the hopelessly argumentative applicant would claim that he measured the distance between his point of rotation and point of touchdown, and look, it's 50.1 NM! At most big airports there could easily be a difference of over a mile between takeoff/landing point and ARP.

I imagine this IS actually a pretty typical issue for helicopter pilots, where they may take off from some random field and land in some other random field, and just have to measure the distance between the actual departure and landing points.
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If you’re going to attempt to take this approach, you better log the lat/longs in your logbook of point of departure and point of landing. If your logbook only documents the airport codes, the assumption is you’re using the airport reference point (ARP) for calculation.

Conversely, you could have two airports with ARPs 50.1 nm apart. I don’t think you’re going to have the DPE question whether the XC counted based on which runway you used and where you lifted off and touched down, but then again, who knows?
 
JackFliesGA said:
Hi everyone! I am planning my first solo cross country, and there is one airfield that is 49.5 miles away from my home airport as measured from the geographic centers of both airports.

Would KLZU → KTOC be accepted by a DPE as a cross-country?

I figure KAHN → KPDK at 48.9 NM is not acceptable, but what about something like KRYY→6A2 at 49.8NM?
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The DPE for my instrument rating saw a few he thought were suspect and measured them. 49-point-something: no good. Fortunately I was well over the minimum required for XC time, but the answer to your question could be no, depending on the DPE. With mine it would have been negatory.
 
mryan75 said:
The DPE for my instrument rating […] measured them.
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That is a story we can all learn from, and the community can appreciate that honesty. Good thing you had something else that qualifies! Thanks for sharing exactly what I wanted to know :) I thought this would have been a really short thread

As have been shared before in this thread, DPEs have high standards for themselves in being representatives of the FAA, so I’m sure they all would be sure to verify anything too close to call.
 
I'm in a similar position, there is a airport 49.7ish nm from my home airport, but the reasoning is that the airports that are 50nm+ are in very mountainous terrain. I can fly to a nearby air port, then stop and take off from there and it would be 50nm away from that airport. But that's not my originating airport technically, and I do not want to take that risk. So we will see what I can do. I'd rather be safe than sorry, and chance the mountains
 
Lenaplane&simple said:
I'm in a similar position, there is a airport 49.7ish nm from my home airport, but the reasoning is that the airports that are 50nm+ are in very mountainous terrain. I can fly to a nearby air port, then stop and take off from there and it would be 50nm away from that airport. But that's not my originating airport technically, and I do not want to take that risk. So we will see what I can do. I'd rather be safe than sorry, and chance the mountains
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That's perfectly legit. You make a repositioning flight to the more distant airport, then it becomes the originating airport for the cross country. No problem with the regs, and much safer than a student pilot doing mountain flying.
 
Half Fast said:
That's perfectly legit. You make a repositioning flight to the more distant airport, then it becomes the originating airport for the cross country. No problem with the regs, and much safer than a student pilot doing mountain flying.
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That is really good to know. I was not getting answers anywhere else and I was frustrated because I'd have to wait (while more time isn't bad it does=more money) so that id be prepared to do the mountainous airports. I appreciate knowing that it is legit
 
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