What Constitutes Cross Country Time?

(ii) For the purpose of meeting the aeronautical experience requirements (except for a rotorcraft category rating), for a private pilot certificate (except for a powered parachute category rating), a commercial pilot certificate, or an instrument rating, or for the purpose of exercising recreational pilot privileges (except in a rotorcraft) under §61.101 (c), time acquired during a flight—

(A) Conducted in an appropriate aircraft;

(B) 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; and

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


The first airport of landing must be >50 nm from the point of departure. On some 3 leg XCs, the order of the landings makes the XC unusable for experience requirements.

Origin airport is A. Airport B is 35 miles north. Airport C is 15.1 miles north of airport B. and 50.1 miles from airport A. They are all in a direct straight line. If it is 50.1 miles from airport a to airport C, and you fly in this order from a to b to c and back, or if you just end at c. It meets the requirment for cross country for training. The regulation does not say that there has to be a 50 NM leg, just that there is a landing 50nm from the origin.



Yeah, there's the game of of:

Start at airport A, fly west 25 NM to airport B.
Decide to establish airport B as your origin airport for the XC flight.
Fly east 50.1 NM (overfly airport A) to airport C.
Fly west from airport C back to airport B.
Decide to establish airport B as your origin airport for the XC flight.
Fly east 50.1 NM (overfly airport A) to airport C.
Fly west from airport C back to airport A.

Done. You have a flight from B to C that is >50NM, but you never got farther away than 25.1 NM from you home airport A.

Probably will have a hard time justifying this later, though.

This would work but you could not log the first A to B leg. The cross country would occur from B to C to A.
 
So if you were piloting the space shuttle would it be cross country? The launch pad is about a half mile from the landing strip, but is the pad considered an airport or a different part of the whole airport?
 
So if you were piloting the space shuttle would it be cross country? The launch pad is about a half mile from the landing strip, but is the pad considered an airport or a different part of the whole airport?

If I was piloting the space shuttle, it wouldn't matter if I logged it as cross country time or not. Not to me or probably just about anyone else.
 
If Voyager landed on a different runway but within the confines of Edwards AFB, is it still considered landing at the same point?
 
So if you were piloting the space shuttle would it be cross country? The launch pad is about a half mile from the landing strip, but is the pad considered an airport or a different part of the whole airport?

I can picture the folks interviewing Hoot Gibson for a job at Southwest, “We would really like to hire you, but we have to ask you about this 438 hours of cross country time that you logged” :)
 
I can picture the folks interviewing Hoot Gibson for a job at Southwest, “We would really like to hire you, but we have to ask you about this 438 hours of cross country time that you logged” :)
next time I see him, im going to ask about it!
 
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