Logbook Legitimacy?

hindsight2020 said:
*laughs in 1.3 fighter conversion.*

I don't even have to cheat, they just throw [free hours] them at me! :D
Reminds me of a song.... *NSFW*
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How did I know, even before the click, it was Dos Gringos. :D Epic.

Back in the analog days of my fighter pilot infancy, I distinctly remember a pilot two years my senior sitting in the Operations office area, making 'entries' in his logbook.

"Fly what you can, log what you need!" was his pronouncement, with an Ess eating grin on his face. Pretty sure he went to Pan Am, wonder how that worked out.
 
Ed Haywood said:
These days it would be pretty easy to just plug the tail number into Flight Aware.
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Ain’t nobody got time for that. At both my airline interviews, my logbook review took maybe 10 minutes. They’re looking for big red flags. Unreported checkride failures, did you log 10 hours of actual on a 1 hour flight, etc.
 
Ed Haywood said:
These days it would be pretty easy to just plug the tail number into Flight Aware.
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Flight Aware won’t tell you who was at the controls or show whether the pilot was solo or whether he was in actual IMC.

OTOH, Flight Aware might be very helpful in creating fake entries....
 
RyanB said:
For each log book entry that may date months or even years in the past? Who has the time for that?
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Probably nobody would ever do that. But you never know. And if there's ever and incident that involves attorneys, I'd kind of expect it.

Slightly off-topic example, shortened. In the 90's, decent sized manufacturing company gets a new CEO. Someone reports a $1k piece of equipment missing, where only 4 or 5 people had keys to the locked space. Previous management just chalked it up the equipment being misplaced. New CEO suspects something weird, on a hunch, and assigns a staff member to review all of the outside cameras, VHS technology, for the surrounding 6 months. It took weeks, cost FAR more than the equipment was worth. Turned out one of the senior employees just walked off with it. Lost his job, wrecked his career. For something that was stupid.
 
Half Fast said:
Flight Aware won’t tell you who was at the controls or show whether the pilot was solo or whether he was in actual IMC.

OTOH, Flight Aware might be very helpful in creating fake entries....
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True on the details. But I wouldn't use FA as a basis for making up numbers. If I were checking logs, and they were flight school aircraft, I'd just call the school. From my experience, it would take about a minute to confirm that pilot Joe Smith had 134 hours of rental 172 time. Faster and easier than checking FA.
 
People get a tad suspicious when a first logbook entry is a disclaimer: "While this record is inspired by actual aircraft, flights, origins, and destinations, certain characterizations, claims, observations, duties, incidents, block times, and at times entire entries are grossly exaggerated or on occasion totally invented for certification purposes."
 
Ed Haywood said:
These days it would be pretty easy to just plug the tail number into Flight Aware.
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Not necessarily. Case in point, I flew 2.4 yesterday that was not picked up by FlightAware. With 978 ADSB out, I’m rarely if ever tracked here in ND unless I pick up VFR FF or obviously file IFR. Not a lot of 978 receivers here transmitting data to FA or FR24.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
There was an accident a few years back where this was the case, half the guy’s hours were “IMC”, and he died due to lose of control in actual IMC.
I’ve also heard of MSFS time being counted.
While legal, I have to question the ability of a CFI recording time while sitting in the right seat. Does that really improve their skills?
I would hope those that cannot fly would be washed out…especially after the Colgan accident.
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The time a CFI spends in the right seat most definitely make one a better pilot. I, for example, started instructing full-time again five months ago. Prior to that I was flying my 182 around 60 hours a year & doing some instructing. Now that I'm full-time instructing again I've noticed my flying skills have sharpened vastly. When you have to demonstrate maneuvers, such as Lazy 8's, short & soft field landings, steep turns, etc your own skills improve. You're also offering critique to your learners maneuvers & learning from their errors. You shouldn't just be "sitting in the right seat" you're teaching.
 
saddletramp said:
The time a CFI spends in the right seat most definitely make one a better pilot. I, for example, started instructing full-time again five months ago. Prior to that I was flying my 182 around 60 hours a year & doing some instructing. Now that I'm full-time instructing again I've noticed my flying skills have sharpened vastly. When you have to demonstrate maneuvers, such as Lazy 8's, short & soft field landings, steep turns, etc your own skills improve. You're also offering critique to your learners maneuvers & learning from their errors. You shouldn't just be "sitting in the right seat" you're teaching.
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That's of course true. Not only about aviation but anything. The single best way to learn something in depth is to teach it.
 
midlifeflyer said:
That's of course true. Not only about aviation but anything. The single best way to learn something in depth is to teach it.
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I second that. I learned more my first year as a CFI than all the hours of being a pilot myself. I learned all new ways to do things wrong. More than once I caught myself saying, "Wow, I didn't know it was possible to screw up that maneuver like that!":eek::D
 
midlifeflyer said:
True... Not only about aviation but anything. The single best way to learn something in depth is to teach it.
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Montessori education breaks students of all ages into three year groups, the first year you learn by observation, the second year you learn by demonstration-- practice, and the third year you learn by integration-- teaching what you learned.
 
midlifeflyer said:
That's of course true. Not only about aviation but anything. The single best way to learn something in depth is to teach it.
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I would argue that you can learn just as much without teaching, but most of us don’t/can’t spend the same amount of time with the subject as we do when we’re teaching.
 
Ed Haywood said:
These days it would be pretty easy to just plug the tail number into Flight Aware.
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Slightly different situation, the PA28 I'm training in doesn't have ADSB out. We're always below 10,000 MSL, nowhere near a bravo, etc. FR24/FlightAware pick us up via ATC radar when we get above about 1,500 AGL. So a cursory comparison of my logged hours with FlightAware would show shorter flight times than I logged. I could defend it with rental logs and my CFI's log, but that's another scenario.
 
A regional, I suppose, would probably depend on some verification by their background check(s) of your past experience. I guess someone that built their time in their own airplane could be difficult to verify. Liars usually get caught in the LOI. Make it through that, the sim will likely uncover the truth.

My civilian logbook played a very positive role in getting hired at a major. It was just a fraction of my total time, but the captain that interviewed me cared a lot about my tail dragger time, acro, and read all of the comments I'd made when I was 17 to 21 years old.
 
Jack Presley said:
My civilian logbook played a very positive role in getting hired at a major. It was just a fraction of my total time, but the captain that interviewed me cared a lot about my tail dragger time, acro, and read all of the comments I'd made when I was 17 to 21 years old.
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Interesting…when I interviewed at a regional years ago, I was told, “the taildragger time isn’t instrument time, and you can’t even count the glider time.”

I guess the best qualifications to have are the same ones the interviewer has. ;)
 
MauleSkinner said:
Interesting…when I interviewed at a regional years ago, I was told, “the taildragger time isn’t instrument time, and you can’t even count the glider time.”

I guess the best qualifications to have are the same ones the interviewer has. ;)
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The instrument time, total time, etc. were not a factor as I'd been flying for 25+ years already. I think he was more interested in a stick and rudder skills that are required for tail draggers and acro, since I didn't have any real non-centerline thrust experience to speak of.
 
saddletramp said:
The time a CFI spends in the right seat most definitely make one a better pilot. I, for example, started instructing full-time again five months ago. Prior to that I was flying my 182 around 60 hours a year & doing some instructing. Now that I'm full-time instructing again I've noticed my flying skills have sharpened vastly. When you have to demonstrate maneuvers, such as Lazy 8's, short & soft field landings, steep turns, etc your own skills improve. You're also offering critique to your learners maneuvers & learning from their errors. You shouldn't just be "sitting in the right seat" you're teaching.
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So as long as I am criticizing the PIC while sitting in the right seat of a King Air I can count the time? I spent about a 1000 hours in the back of a Hawkeye doing that very thing. I'll log it today and update my application to the Regional folks while I'm at it. ;):cool:
 
Rich Holt said:
So as long as I am criticizing the PIC while sitting in the right seat of a King Air I can count the time? I spent about a 1000 hours in the back of a Hawkeye doing that very thing. I'll log it today and update my application to the Regional folks while I'm at it. ;):cool:
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Only if you hold an MEI
 
MauleSkinner said:
I guess the best qualifications to have are the same ones the interviewer has. ;)
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It helps to use the same acronyms and phaseology too. Three decades ago I was surprised not to be selected for a second interview for a position because I held all the qualifications. Later I bumped into the interviewer's boss and discovered that the management type that conducted first interviews had a checklist of acronyms and phases that he checked off, and if the exact term you used didn't match then you didn't get the coveted checkmark.
 
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That's their loss. If you don't have at least someone on the interview panel that is or was qualified for the job, you're doing it wrong.
 
Hi,

While the chances to get caught is pretty low I would not recommend trying this. I know of a pilot where they actually checked the logbooks of all aircrafts he had in his logbooks... yes, it took them three months. But they did, in the end, find 15min that were not correctly logged... he did get away with this, no drama. But if they want, they can.

Tobias
 
Tobias Göller said:
While the chances to get caught is pretty low I would not recommend trying this. I know of a pilot where they actually checked the logbooks of all aircrafts he had in his logbooks... yes, it took them three months. But they did, in the end, find 15min that were not correctly logged... he did get away with this, no drama. But if they want, they can. Tobias
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You call that 'getting away with it?' Am I missing something? It sounds like they verified all his time with one small mistake of 15min. That can easily have been a legitimate mistake.
 
Fearless Tower said:
What about it? Is rounding not what most pilots do? I’ve never logged beyond one decimal place.

57 minutes is .95 rounded up to 1.0
56 minutes is .93 round down to .9

In the grand scheme of things, it all evens out.
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If my instructor charges by the hour and not by the tenth, do I get to log dual received or the instructor log dual given by the hour? I mean I’m paying for the whole hour and all.
 
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Tobias Göller said:
Hi,

While the chances to get caught is pretty low I would not recommend trying this. I know of a pilot where they actually checked the logbooks of all aircrafts he had in his logbooks... yes, it took them three months. But they did, in the end, find 15min that were not correctly logged... he did get away with this, no drama. But if they want, they can.

Tobias
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What you posted sounds absolutely absurd at face value.

Aircraft logbook time has absolutely zero correlation with pilot logbook time.
 
Tobias Göller said:
Hi,

While the chances to get caught is pretty low I would not recommend trying this. I know of a pilot where they actually checked the logbooks of all aircrafts he had in his logbooks... yes, it took them three months. But they did, in the end, find 15min that were not correctly logged... he did get away with this, no drama. But if they want, they can.

Tobias
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Lol. Which airline/company was this? Both my 121 interviews, the logbook check took maybe 10 minutes.
 
Hi,

Fearless Tower said:
What you posted sounds absolutely absurd at face value.

Aircraft logbook time has absolutely zero correlation with pilot logbook time.
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In a way: yes. But... what they tried to achieve was to prove that he had some flights in his logbook that could nowhere be found on any plane log.

And he (out of some reason... could be a mis-remembering?) had one flight (15min) in that could not be found in any aircraft log.

That guy already had problems with the AA for not logging correctly (or timely) before.

Tobias
 
Hi,

thito01 said:
You call that 'getting away with it?' Am I missing something? It sounds like they verified all his time with one small mistake of 15min. That can easily have been a legitimate mistake.
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Yes. Problem was he did log a flight that was nowhere in any plane log. At least that was what I was told...

Tobias

P.S: There are logbooks where not only the flight-time is logged but the block-time, too.
 
Tobias Göller said:
Hi,

While the chances to get caught is pretty low I would not recommend trying this. I know of a pilot where they actually checked the logbooks of all aircrafts he had in his logbooks... yes, it took them three months. But they did, in the end, find 15min that were not correctly logged... he did get away with this, no drama. But if they want, they can.

Tobias
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Apologize if I'm assuming anything incorrect here - but, given the use use of the umlaut - o in your user name, I assume you're not from the U.S. In the U.S., there is no way aircraft logbooks could be used to verify pilot time, as flights are not recorded individually in the aircraft logbooks. Aircraft logbooks in the U.S. are strictly or maintenance purposes.

In other countries, are aircraft logbooks treated more like "ship's logs", where each flight is recorded? In that case, I suppose it could be used to verify your flight time. But why would a company spend 3 months to do this? Seems like a waste of time to me. I'd be curious about the situation here, why the company spent all that time and money to verify the pilot's time.
 
Hi

jordane93 said:
Lol. Which airline/company was this? Both my 121 interviews, the logbook check took maybe 10 minutes.
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That wasn't a company, it was the German "Luftfahrbundesaufsicht" (German FAA).

They compared the logs that did for some of the planes have block-times in them as well - and they found a discrepancy there... there were some (stupid) letters going back and forth as far as II recall...

Tobias
 
Hi,

RussR said:
Apologize if I'm assuming anything incorrect here - but, given the use use of the umlaut - o in your user name, I assume you're not from the U.S. In the U.S., there is no way aircraft logbooks could be used to verify pilot time, as flights are not recorded individually in the aircraft logbooks. Aircraft logbooks in the U.S. are strictly or maintenance purposes.

In other countries, are aircraft logbooks treated more like "ship's logs", where each flight is recorded? In that case, I suppose it could be used to verify your flight time. But why would a company spend 3 months to do this? Seems like a waste of time to me. I'd be curious about the situation here, why the company spent all that time and money to verify the pilot's time.
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You are correct. I fly in Europe. We record every single flight (crew, T/O / LDG, Numbers of LDGs, Time (sometimes: Blocktime).

Most of the aircraft I fly we account for the flight-time only. I fly one aircraft where the hobbs is calculated (engine run-time).

That wasn't a company. That was the german FAA-Lookalike. And Authorities do have one thing at hand: TIME. Especially german authorities....

It was a complete waste of time - but they kept that guy busy for over a year because of those 15 minutes. In Germany the thing is that, in order to get a pilote license, you need to undergo a background check, too. He was opposing to it (because this doesn't make any sense). So... he then went and transscribed his license to another country (perfectly legal as long as it's EASA AND you have a valid address there).

They didn't like that... and went after him.

Stupid story.

Tobias

EDIT: I remember they (the bureaucrats) did try to market this as a success - and were made fun of afterwards... not so clever move from that point of view
 
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If someone were to scrutinize my logbooks, they might wonder how I was able to log flights where they were 100% actual IMC. Easy. rounding to the nearest tenth accounted for the four or fewer minutes during takeoff and landing.

I'm surprised someone hasn't mentioned the difference between Tach and Hobbs time for bulking up those hours as a low time wannabee...
 
Tarheelpilot said:
I won’t have to worry about that problem. I already live and work in the best country on the planet. All of Europe can suck it.
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they might or might not do that. I don't judge countries that way. I have met idiots in every country so far. And I was able to meet good people in every country as well.

You can't choose where you are born. But it's your decision what you make with your life.
 
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