Logging cross country time

mandm

mandm

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Question about logging xc time, I know the point to point is 50nm, but what if I make a touch and go, does that break the xc timer?

For example
KUGN->KGYY->KMDW->KUGN

Does this mean I only count half the flight as xc or the entire flight?
 
Log all of it.

really, any landing is an XC. Only the 50+ miles count for ratings. I still keep track of any over 50.
 
kaiser said:
My rule is if I have a landing at a place where the straight line is >50nm…
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Yeah but what about the midway touch & go? I think I’ve been doing it wrong as I would usually do midway then fly up to Racine and then back to UGN to have the 50nm legs.
 
That sounds like a repositioning flight to get the one leg over 50. It all counts as cross country.

After you earn your commercial it’s really a moot question anyway.
 
I have never logged anything less than 50 miles as x country.
 
As long as you land someplace during the flight that’s greater than 50nm from your origin, it’s XC.
 
mandm said:
Yeah but what about the midway touch & go? I think I’ve been doing it wrong as I would usually do midway then fly up to Racine and then back to UGN to have the 50nm legs.
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Doesn't matter as long as one spot was >50

RyanB said:
As long as you land someplace during the flight that’s greater than 50nm from your origin, it’s XC.
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This.
 
I do want to go for my ATP, so I want to log it correctly, and normally I wouldn’t but now I’m thinking hey it doesn’t make sense for a touch and go that doesn’t really count as a landing to break my xc when I did land at a point >50nm from the origin? Or does it? I’ll still mark KMDW in my logbook.
 
If you fly from point A to point B, even when they are half a mile apart, it is cross country. If you do six hours of pattern work at point B in the same flight, it all counts as cross country time.

The distance only matters if you are using the time to qualify for a rating or certificate. Other than that qualification, the logging doesn’t change. Fly 51 miles away, do a few hours of pattern work, and fly home. The whole thing is cross country time and counts toward a rating or certificate.

I use the XC field in MyFlightBook for >50nm trips and the separate “cross country less than 50 nm” property for the shorter trips. That way, if I for some reason need to tell you my total XC time, I won’t short-change myself, but I don’t inadvertently count the shorter trips toward eligibility for a rating or certificate. Not that I’m likely to apply for an ATP, but logging it now is easy and reconstructing it later would be hard, so I do the former, just in case.
 
RyanB said:
As long as you land someplace during the flight that’s greater than 50nm from your origin, it’s XC.
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Nope, it doesn't have to be 50nm:
§ 61.1(b)
Cross-country time means—

(i) Except as provided in paragraphs (ii) through (vi) of this definition, time acquired during flight—

(A) Conducted by a person who holds a pilot certificate;

(B) Conducted in an aircraft;

(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.
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It only has to be over 50nm if that time is being used "For the purpose of meeting the aeronautical experience requirements" for a certificate or rating.

I tend to log XC for any flight outside of the local area, 20 miles or so, where I have to pay attention to get there, as opposed to just knowing where the airport is. But I'm not pursuing any additional certificates, and if I did, I already have the required XC time and could easily find it in my old logbooks.
 
mandm said:
Question about logging xc time, I know the point to point is 50nm, but what if I make a touch and go, does that break the xc timer?

For example
KUGN->KGYY->KMDW->KUGN

Does this mean I only count half the flight as xc or the entire flight?
Click to expand...

IMHO - If a pilot is flying to an airport 52nm away, but en route does a T&G at an airport located at the 26nm point, then the pilot has flown two 26nm XCs, not one 52nm XC.

Does that help?
 
mandm said:
Yeah but what about the midway touch & go? I think I’ve been doing it wrong as I would usually do midway then fly up to Racine and then back to UGN to have the 50nm legs.
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It's fine.

The rule, which somehow gets misunderstood, is that, for the purposes of private through commercial certificates and ratings, a cross country in an airplane is a flight "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."

Note: "a" point of landing, not "every" point of landing. So long as one landing is more than 50 nm from where you began the flight, it doesn't matter how many landings you make along the way nor how far those intermediate airports are. There is no "leg" requirement. If they were available, you could stop and do a landing every 5 miles in both directions if you wanted, and it would still count. The flight you posted is just fine.

The proof that there is no 50nm leg requirement in a "normal" cross country is in the exception - the "long" solo cross country in 61.109(a)(5):

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;​
​
Notice that the FAA has no problem telling you when they want leg of a certain length.

The only problem with your flight for the "long" cross country is the touch & go. And that's only because the special cross country requires three "full-stop" landings. Otherwise, with your 52nm UGN → GYY leg, you've met the requirements for that special cross country too.
 
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Half Fast said:
IMHO - If a pilot is flying to an airport 52nm away, but en route does a T&G at an airport located at the 26nm point, then the pilot has flown two 26nm XCs, not one 52nm XC.

Does that help?
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It only helps if he's looking for a wrong answer :D

BTW, you may not remember this but maybe 20 years ago, the Buffalo FSDO posted something on their website saying that every leg had to be >50. The Chief Counsel got several messages about it and it was taken down rather quickly.
 
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Half Fast said:
IMHO - If a pilot is flying to an airport 52nm away, but en route does a T&G at an airport located at the 26nm point, then the pilot has flown two 26nm XCs, not one 52nm XC.

Does that help?
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according to the flight plan in question, his first leg was 52nm straight line distance, allowing the entire flight to be counted as xc so no, I'd say this doesn't help.

EDIT: dang, foiled once again by midlifeflyer!
 
Rules for logging cross country are one thing, rules for a cross country counting against a particular rating are another.
The 50 miles or a 50 mile leg only apply to specific ratings and specific requirements towards a rating. Other magic numbers needed for a rating include, any distance, 25 miles, 100 miles, 2 hours, 150 miles, 250 miles, and probably a bunch of other stuff that I am too lazy to look up.
 
iamtheari said:
If you fly from point A to point B, even when they are half a mile apart, it is cross country. If you do six hours of pattern work at point B in the same flight, it all counts as cross country time.
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I only log cross country if I've made a landing greater than 50nm from my origin, but that isn't germane to the nit I'm about to pick:

During the logbook review portion of my Private checkride, the DPE noted that I had logged 3.0 hours of night flight, all of which was logged as cross-country time, including eight landings and eight laps of the pattern at the first cross-country destination airport, one landing at the second, and the tenth and final landing back at home base. He told me he didn't believe pattern work at a distant airport should be logged as part of the cross country time, even if you never exit the aircraft or shut down before departing. I guess I can see his point since pattern flying doesn't entail the type of navigation experience that logging cross-country time is designed to quantify. I don't know if he invented this definition or if he could point to some tidbit of legalese buried deep in the FARs. I have never really made a habit of doing pattern work at a distant airport in the time since that flight, so I never bothered to dig any deeper.
 
ColinD said:
I only log cross country if I've made a landing greater than 50nm from my origin, but that isn't germane to the nit I'm about to pick:

During the logbook review portion of my Private checkride, the DPE noted that I had logged 3.0 hours of night flight, all of which was logged as cross-country time, including eight landings and eight laps of the pattern at the first cross-country destination airport, one landing at the second, and the tenth and final landing back at home base. He told me he didn't believe pattern work at a distant airport should be logged as part of the cross country time, even if you never exit the aircraft or shut down before departing. I guess I can see his point since pattern flying doesn't entail the type of navigation experience that logging cross-country time is designed to quantify. I don't know if he invented this definition or if he could point to some tidbit of legalese buried deep in the FARs. I have never really made a habit of doing pattern work at a distant airport in the time since that flight, so I never bothered to dig any deeper.
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If he had disregarded the night cross country time accumulated in the pattern, would you still have been eligible to take the check ride? I wonder if he was just making a point about a dumb rule he disagrees with or if he was enforcing an interpretation of the rule that differs from the way I understand it.
 
iamtheari said:
If he had disregarded the night cross country time accumulated in the pattern, would you still have been eligible to take the check ride? I wonder if he was just making a point about a dumb rule he disagrees with or if he was enforcing an interpretation of the rule that differs from the way I understand it.
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The three hours of required night training must include a cross country and ten takeoffs and landings, but there's no minimum time duration for the cross-country portion, only a stipulation that it must cover 100nm or more in total distance.

I wasn't double-dipping and trying to cover the other cross-country requirements with the night flight. I think he was just being needlessly pedantic.
 
ColinD said:
I wasn't double-dipping and trying to cover the other cross-country requirements with the night flight. I think he was just being needlessly pedantic.
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It was more a question of whether he counted the time as you logged it or not, after the lecture about it. Needlessly pedantic would be refusing the administer your check ride until you log what he thinks the rule requires.
 
mandm said:
I do want to go for my ATP, so I want to log it correctly, and normally I wouldn’t but now I’m thinking hey it doesn’t make sense for a touch and go that doesn’t really count as a landing to break my xc when I did land at a point >50nm from the origin? Or does it? I’ll still mark KMDW in my logbook.
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It can be a touch and go. The FAA will say "full stop" when they want full stop.
 
The cross-country requirements had been met regardless of the way those eight laps had been logged , so it was irrelevant to the checkride eligibility.
 
KUGN-KGYY (52nm)
KGYY-KMDW-KUGN (each leg <50nm)

Yes I want to record my xc hours for purposes of earning my ATP one day, probably 10+ years from now, I guess when I’m at 1500hours it won’t matter, but I don’t want my DPE or anyone else looking at my logs saying hey, KGYY-KMDW-KUGN is not xc time.

I’m sure I’ll be well over the xc minimum requirement anyway so it’ll be a moot point, but I’d like to have my logbooks as accurate as possible.
 
mandm said:
KUGN-KGYY (52nm)
KGYY-KMDW-KUGN (each leg <50nm)

Yes I want to record my xc hours for purposes of earning my ATP one day, probably 10+ years from now, I guess when I’m at 1500hours it won’t matter, but I don’t want my DPE or anyone else looking at my logs saying hey, KGYY-KMDW-KUGN is not xc time.

I’m sure I’ll be well over the xc minimum requirement anyway so it’ll be a moot point, but I’d like to have my logbooks as accurate non-triggering as possible.
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There’s a difference. ;)
 
XC time is all about non-local navigation and operations. It’s about origin and destination, not whether you get in or out of an aircraft or if you stop along the way. If you omit the landing at Midway, the operation is identical … the airplane arrived 50nm from its origin via 61.1(b)(i)(D) / 61.1(b)(iv)(C).
 
mandm said:
KUGN-KGYY (52nm)
KGYY-KMDW-KUGN (each leg <50nm)

Yes I want to record my xc hours for purposes of earning my ATP one day, probably 10+ years from now, I guess when I’m at 1500hours it won’t matter, but I don’t want my DPE or anyone else looking at my logs saying hey, KGYY-KMDW-KUGN is not xc time.
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Why would they say that? There is exactly zero difference between the two in terms of qualifying as a cross country. If it qualifies for the private, commercial certificates, and instrument rating, it qualifies for the ATP too. The one and only difference between the cross country time for the ATP, as opposed to private, instrument, and commercial, is that no landing is required. It's the removal of the landing requirement (a well-deserved tip of the hat to the military), not an increase in requirements or a prohibition on landing.

Check it out and see what is says instead of imagining what it says.
 
So I dropped my Bonanza off for its annual at 55SC after departing my home base of KUZA, 5 NM point to point. I logged it as cross country. I am not working on any new ratings and have plenty of the 50+ NM XC already logged if I wanted to work on a new rating.
 
mandm said:
Question about logging xc time, I know the point to point is 50nm, but what if I make a touch and go, does that break the xc timer?

For example
KUGN->KGYY->KMDW->KUGN

Does this mean I only count half the flight as xc or the entire flight?
Click to expand...
I don't remember seeing anything that says landings must be to a full stop for cross country training requirements.
 
luvflyin said:
I don't remember seeing anything that says landings must be to a full stop for cross country training requirements.
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I suspect the confusion is some instructors want a full stop to get gas, and a signature that the student was actually there.
 
midlifeflyer said:
Only for specific flights, not generally.
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Which specific flights? Taildraggers? There’s the gotta be to a full stop thing for currency thing. But for cross country requirements for certification, it ain’t ringin’ a bell with me.
 
luvflyin said:
Which specific flights? Taildraggers? There’s the gotta be to a full stop thing for currency thing. But for cross country requirements for certification, it ain’t ringin’ a bell with me.
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Check the long student solo cross country. I think I quoted it earlier in the thread.

Edit. I did.

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;
 
midlifeflyer said:
Check the long student solo cross country. I think I quoted it earlier in the thread.

Edit. I did.

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;
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My bell be rung. Thanks
 
midlifeflyer said:
Check the long student solo cross country. I think I quoted it earlier in the thread.

Edit. I did.

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;
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@mandm , ya still here? Your question answered
 
I’m more confused than when I started the thread.
 
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