Logging cross country

[digits_]

If TC wants pure dead-reckoning techniques to be the sole qualifier for a flight to be considered cross-country, they will say so.

Going to the practice area and back should absolutely qualify as cross-country because navigation techniques are employed.
You're going somewhere by finding your way there.
Just because you have done it hundreds of times and can do it without a hitch and with little effort doesn't mean you're not using navigational techniques. Map reading? Finding landmarks? Even mentally calculating time distance and fuel? All happens on the ground and in the air even for a jaunt along the Fraser from Boundary Bay to the practice areas.


This isn't just a disputed opinion. It's the regulator's interpretation.
My CPL PTR had several flights shown as A-A, less than one hour logged, and ex. 23 ticked for navigation. Minimum hours, licence issued without questions.
My ATPL application included a page I made to show cross country flights for the PIC, night, and night PIC requirements. I did this so they wouldn't need to dig through my logbook, they could look up flights with the dates from that sheet. Crystal clear and in their face was the fact that many of my flights were A-A with no further explanation. I wouldn't have met the requirements without those flights. Again, licence issued without questions.

Agreed. Same here. Lots of flights that counted as cross country flights, that wouldn't have passed some of the definitions in this topic.

The root cause of this discussion is that it is a bit of a silly requirement without further clarification.

[455tt]

Just so I follow this line of argument, please confirm: if you did a flight where you take off and then, when leaving the departure aerodrome circuit, you can immediately see your destination/practice area, since it is so close, and you then fly straight there visually, and back, this type of flight will be considered by you to be "cross country flight experience" as per Transport Canada licensing requirements, which you would have no concerns with, and which you would happily include, certify and submit on an application for licence/rating?

[digits_]

Just so I follow this line of argument, please confirm: if you did a flight where you take off and then, when leaving the departure aerodrome circuit, you can immediately see your destination/practice area, since it is so close, and you then fly straight there visually, and back, this type of flight will be considered by you to be "cross country flight experience" as per Transport Canada licensing requirements, which you would have no concerns with, and which you would happily include, certify and submit on an application for licence/rating?

Yes.

On the other hand, it will probably only count for 0.2 hours or whatever it is because it is so short.

[455tt]

And your support for this proposition would be found directly, or indirectly from what Transport Canada published reference?

[ahramin]

And your support for this proposition would be found directly, or indirectly from what Transport Canada published reference?

additional hours cross-country flight time, with flight time calculated in accordance with section 421.10

421.10 Reserved
(effective 2014/04/14)

Transport Canada doesn't know or doesn't care. Either way, anyone who tells you that your cross-country time needs to meet their invented requirements, uses Transport Canada as a vicarious "proof by authority or you'll have trouble getting your licence", then asks you for a reference for the authority that they are referencing without a reference should probably be ignored. Aviation as a hobby or a profession can have serious consequences and there's no room for amateurs posing as experts making up rules that do not exist.

[digits_]

And your support for this proposition would be found directly, or indirectly from what Transport Canada published reference?

I wrote

The root cause of this discussion is that it is a bit of a silly requirement without further clarification.

I have no clarification to support my position that the requirement is silly wihout further clarification.

On the other hand, I can state that I, just like other people in this topic, have not had any trouble receiving my licenses and ratings by counting such time as navigation/cross country time.

[455tt]

OK fine - no TC references, just your confident opinion that logging cross country experience is a joke, and one can log pretty much whatever one wants to.

But if you could please respond honestly, for purposes of your own PPL and CPL, which would have been reviewed by your instructor, CFI, AP and TC at the time of your application for licence, did your pilot logbook include all of your short jaunts to the local training areas as cross country flights, as others here have claimed they did, or were these local jaunts excluded from your early days of cross country experience? I mean if it was .2 or .3 hrs each way, that's .4 or .6 hours per flight that you would have logged as cross country, making for a rather sizable amount of cross country experience at the time of your applications for licence.

I would have thought that, had you logged all of these jaunts to the training areas as cross country, at least for the purposes of your PPL and CPL, somebody higher up in the training and licencing hierarchy would have caught this and corrected it.

I can certainly see that once you have an ATPL, cross country experience would have less meaning and importance, but in the early days pre-CPL and PPL, there would have been much greater oversight and supervision of your logbook entries.

[photofly]

OK fine - no TC references, just your confident opinion that logging cross country experience is a joke, and one can log pretty much whatever one wants to.

But if you could please respond honestly, for purposes of your own PPL and CPL, which would have been reviewed by your instructor, CFI, AP and TC at the time of your application for licence, did your pilot logbook include all of your short jaunts to the local training areas as cross country flights, as others here have claimed they did, or were these local jaunts excluded from your early days of cross country experience? I mean if it was .2 or .3 hrs each way, that's .4 or .6 hours per flight that you would have logged as cross country, making for a rather sizable amount of cross country experience at the time of your applications for licence.

As you will know, applications for PPL land CPL are supported in the "Experience" requirement by a Pilot Training Record, which the responsibility to complete lies with the instructor, and the responsibility to check lies with the CFI or his or her delegate. The instructor doesn't review it, he fills it in.

A flight school typically doesn't get involved in what a student writes in their personal log. That's why it's a personal log.

My understanding is that (at least during PPL and CPL flight training sorties) cross country experience can be claimed whenever navigational skills (as taught) are being used; therefore, whenever you have drawn up a navigational log, prepared a chart for a flight and estimated an ETA, and navigate by maintaining a steady heading correcting your track and arrival time by reference to your pre-prepared materials, then you can credit that portion to your cross-country experience. That would include carrying out an in-flight diversion in the manner which a flight test examiner might ask you to do.

If you do that a few times on your way to wherever you practice your air-work (which is a great idea) include that much of the flight in the x-c column. If you do it on the way back, likewise. If you do it every single time to the practice area, include it every single time. But you're unlikely to have prepared the flight in this manner on your way to learn and practice exercise 5 or 6.

The requirement that not all x-c time be logged in ten or twenty minute increments is satisfied by the requirement of the (e.g., for the PPL) 150nm x-c. Other than that there's no requirement for distance, duration or purpose of individual flights for which x-c time is claimed. Unless there's a direction from TC licencing that it be otherwise, there's no reason to invent one.

[digits_]

OK fine - no TC references, just your confident opinion that logging cross country experience is a joke, and one can log pretty much whatever one wants to.

But if you could please respond honestly, for purposes of your own PPL and CPL, which would have been reviewed by your instructor, CFI, AP and TC at the time of your application for licence, did your pilot logbook include all of your short jaunts to the local training areas as cross country flights, as others here have claimed they did, or were these local jaunts excluded from your early days of cross country experience? I mean if it was .2 or .3 hrs each way, that's .4 or .6 hours per flight that you would have logged as cross country, making for a rather sizable amount of cross country experience at the time of your applications for licence.

If it takes you .2 or .3 to get to the practice area, you better log it as cross country. I made references to .2 or .3 total per flight, because we were discussing practice areas that were near the airport. Either way, in both cases, there is nothing preventing you from logging it.

I did not deal with TC for the issue of my PPL, but I have added some hours acquired in a similar way with students, and there have been no troubles. I only did this when they were actually navigating to the area. Not when we were practicing slow flight or under the hood exercises on our way there.

Think about it from a TC point of view. What do they care about? Paperwork and an umbrella to protect them agains liability claims. They get PTRs that indicate which exercises have been completed. That satisfies the paperwork. The instructur and student sign it off, that's the umbrella. Unless there is some suspicion of fraud, there will be no further inquiries. Since there are no rules published by TC about the cross country definition, you and your instructor need to agree on what qualifies.

A bit of an anecdote. When converting my licenses to the Canadian system, I was short about 2 hours of dual instrument hours. Oh-oh. Trouble. I went through my logbook and noticed that my instructor at the time listed the code for under the hood flying during my pre PPL test review flight. It was a fairly long flight, and almost every exercise code was listed in there. I pointed this out to transport in a hail mary attempt, and they accepted the full 2 hours of the flight. Because there was a paper trail and a signature. A few days later I received a fancy letter from my out of country FTU listing all my dual instrument flights, showing I did meet the requirements, but it wasn't even necessary at that point.

[Big Pistons Forever]

The many problems with the CAR's are very frustrating for TC Inspectors.

One obvious oversight is that the CAR's would specify the requirement for "cross country flight time" in numerous regulations and then not provide a definition of cross country.

For these issues often the only official guidance becomes TATC decisions

When I searched the TATC site the only decision concerning the applicability of cross country flight time for licensing purposes was Shannon Theresa Lanning v Minister of Transport. However this decision does not really address the main issue being discussed in this thread.

[MOAB]

A number of years ago I called TC to ask this very question. They called me back about a week later and said "there is no distance requirement or the need to go to a different airport or site that the point of departure".

[Grey_Wolf]

Here's an article that speaks to the topic.

https://aviationsolutions.net/812


I believe that the "25 nm rule" stems from an interpretation of CAR 605.38(3)(d) with regards to the carriage of an ELT.
It stipulates that an FTU can operate within 25 nm of the departure aerodrome without an ELT. Hence, the interpretation was that 25 nm and under was considered local, and anything above that was "cross-country".

[ahramin]

But if you could please respond honestly, for purposes of your own PPL and CPL, which would have been reviewed by your instructor, CFI, AP and TC at the time of your application for licence, did your pilot logbook include all of your short jaunts to the local training areas as cross country flights, as others here have claimed they did, or were these local jaunts excluded from your early days of cross country experience?

Of course it was for the PPL and CPL. When else would someone be flying the the practice area? Once you have your CPL most if not all your flying will be cross country and there is no longer the need to log every .1 in order to satisfy a licence requirement. Everyone in my class had 45 hours when we were issued our PPLs and I don't see how else we would have had enough cross country time to qualify. Looking back in my logbook we only had 1 dual and 2 solo cross country flights in the entire syllabus. 5.1 hours PIC cross country for the PPL application.

whenever you have drawn up a navigational log, prepared a chart for a flight and estimated an ETA, and navigate by maintaining a steady heading correcting your track and arrival time by reference to your pre-prepared materials, then you can credit that portion to your cross-country experience.

Is pilotage not taught anymore? Fly to the bridge, rough heading 050° until you see the other bridge, look to the right and there's the practice area? No need to draw up a navigation log or prepare the chart, just look at the chart as you go. For a modern airplane going somewhere close, wouldn't marking a point on the GPS and following it there count as navigating? If not, then what is it called?

Yesterday I had to deliver an aircraft to a strip I had never been to before. Rather than preparing a chart with lines, calculate a heading for wind, and preparing a navlog I just measured the distance and planned to follow the highway. I noted each town as I passed it on the highway and 40 minutes later looked around and after a couple mistakes found the field. This seems to me like a perfectly acceptable way of navigating and was one of the skills taught to me during my PPL and CPL. I'm sure I could still prepare a navlog and ded recon my way to somewhere, but I haven't done so in a very long time. Everything now is either GPS or pilotage. Ded reconing teaches a lot of very important skills but in my experience 99.9% of navigation nowadays doesn't use it.

[photofly]

Is pilotage not taught anymore? Fly to the bridge, rough heading 050° until you see the other bridge, look to the right and there's the practice area? No need to draw up a navigation log or prepare the chart, just look at the chart as you go. For a modern airplane going somewhere close, wouldn't marking a point on the GPS and following it there count as navigating? If not, then what is it called?

GPS is excluded from use during exercise 23, so for PPL and CPL students I would disallow its use as a primary method of navigation for time logged as cross country time.

Pilotage is permitted for PPL diversions, so if navigation to the practice area were done in a way that met all the criteria listed for exercise 23D, including using a chart to select feature to follow, estimating arrival time and fuel remaining, I would allow it. If merely looking out the window and flying to the water tower and then seeing the destination, because that’s what you did last time, I would not.

Post PPL, while preparing for a CPL, I would not permit pilotage time to count: the CPL flight test guide does not permit it to be used during the PPL flight test

The CPL candidate will use dead reckoning for navigation, as though over barren terrain. The following of geographical features, such as rivers or roads will not be allowed on this Commercial Pilot Licence flight test.

Obviously my opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it.

[ahramin]

Thanks for the information photofly. I'm surprised at the emphasis on ded reckoning. I would have hoped that a CPL course would prepare a pilot to use GPS rather than forbid it.

[Beefitarian]

Funny how many different opinions there are on this sort of thing.

Way back I did my first X-country solo as a student pilot with a touch and go at the other airport.

Last year I was told not to log going to that same airport and doing touch and goes as x-country because, "You need a full stop to log x-counrty."

Oh well, I don't care anymore because I just fly for fun on occasion and I'm not likely to be trying to get a CPL or anything. Doesn't much matter what I write in my silly flying diary.

[digits_]

Funny how many different opinions there are on this sort of thing.

Way back I did my first X-country solo as a student pilot with a touch and go at the other airport.

Last year I was told not to log going to that same airport and doing touch and goes as x-country because, "You need a full stop to log x-counrty."

Oh well, I don't care anymore because I just fly for fun on occasion and I'm not likely to be trying to get a CPL or anything. Doesn't much matter what I write in my silly flying diary.

You never know when you might need those hours. Just put it in your logbook. In a few years a rental place or insurance company might require a certain amount of cross country time.

[Beefitarian]

I don't know, do you really think that 0.3 dual cross country time logged as regular time is going to make a big difference?

[AngelsSang]

Interesting discussion, since there has been no response for 6 months, I don't feel too bad about being a little off topic. Did anyone of you actually enjoy your flight training, or was it all just doom and gloom? When I did mine, it was enjoyable, so much so, I would ask my instructor to allow me XC trips, just to go to strange places. It was long ago, and I certainly don't remember the hours I logged, but was way past the XC time required, as well as TT needed to do my private test. That time just goes towards your commercial anyway, if you planned to continue on past your private. But I loved flying, it wasn't just about putting in the minimum time, and short trips.

[Chris123]

This has been really helpful! Thank you for the information.