ATPL Night PIC Xcountry

[wcpilot]

Hello,

I'm sure this question has been asked a million times but with no actual definition of xcountry is it just up to Transport Canada to decide what qualifies? I've heard a good rule of thumb is 25nm. For me the easiest flight is to take off from my home airport, fly to an airport 20nm away, do an approach and land then take off again and do an approach back into my home airport. Usually ends up being 0.9 or 1 hour. Will Transport have an issue with me doing this 25 times for my ATPL? I need to finish the hours in the next two months and official night doesn't start until 10pm so its convenient for me to just go for a quick flight so I can still get sleep before I start work at 7am. The next airport with lights is over an hour away so I wouldn't be back on the ground until past midnight so I would really rather just go to the close by one but can Transport reject my ATPL for doing the same flight over and over again? I'm probably looking to closely into this but I want to make sure.

Thanks!

[Heavy Rayn]

Were you required to navigate along a route to a destination? If yes then it’s XC. If not, we’ll then it’s not XC. Doing that flight 25 times sounds awful. You’d probably be better to just take a couple mornings off and go 5 hours in a night or something instead. You’ll get it done faster this way too.

[digits_]

Yes it would qualify. Sounds boring though.

Were you required to navigate along a route to a destination? If yes then it’s XC. If not, we’ll then it’s not XC. Doing that flight 25 times sounds awful. You’d probably be better to just take a couple mornings off and go 5 hours in a night or something instead. You’ll get it done faster this way too.

That's not even technically a requirement.

[photofly]

You don’t have to land at, or even fly to another airport to make XC time. You can navigate to somewhere and navigate back again.

[triplebarrel]

Hello,

I'm sure this question has been asked a million times but with no actual definition of xcountry is it just up to Transport Canada to decide what qualifies? I've heard a good rule of thumb is 25nm. For me the easiest flight is to take off from my home airport, fly to an airport 20nm away, do an approach and land then take off again and do an approach back into my home airport. Usually ends up being 0.9 or 1 hour. Will Transport have an issue with me doing this 25 times for my ATPL? I need to finish the hours in the next two months and official night doesn't start until 10pm so its convenient for me to just go for a quick flight so I can still get sleep before I start work at 7am. The next airport with lights is over an hour away so I wouldn't be back on the ground until past midnight so I would really rather just go to the close by one but can Transport reject my ATPL for doing the same flight over and over again? I'm probably looking to closely into this but I want to make sure.

Thanks!

yes, its fine, I did something similar. CYBW to nearby airports. At night, sometimes with friends. City tour over CYYC on the way back. Still navigating, planning, XC etc etc. TC had no issues. There's no cause for issues your plan meets and exceeds the requirements.

[wcpilot]

Thanks everyone, much appreciated! It will definitely be boring and I'll try to mix it up but happy to hear this will count if push comes to shove.

[co-joe]

It might actually be easier to name the things that are not xc than what it is. Basically the circuit, and upper air work in the practice area are not xc, but getting to and from the practice area requires navigation, but explaining 0.2 xc on every flight seemed weird so I left it off.

[photofly]

Coincidentally, I found this forthcoming change in the CARs in a CARAC document:
https://wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/Saf-Sec-Sur/2/ ... x?id=12310

CAR 400.01: There is currently no definition for the term “cross country flight” in this section. The proposed
amendments would include a definition that quantifies a cross country as a flight using standard navigation
procedures following a pre-planned route to a destination with at minimum a 25 nautical mile radius from the
point of departure.

[Loading...]

It might actually be easier to name the things that are not xc than what it is. Basically the circuit, and upper air work in the practice area are not xc, but getting to and from the practice area requires navigation, but explaining 0.2 xc on every flight seemed weird so I left it off.

So would survey work be consider x-country then? Even though you land at, and takeoff from the same airport

[co-joe]

It might actually be easier to name the things that are not xc than what it is. Basically the circuit, and upper air work in the practice area are not xc, but getting to and from the practice area requires navigation, but explaining 0.2 xc on every flight seemed weird so I left it off.

So would survey work be consider x-country then? Even though you land at, and takeoff from the same airport

I would say so. I flew air photo and logged it all as xc. Flying lines is hard work, especially down low, and the flight planning/ navigating is highly challenging and requires a lot of skill with GPS, latt and long coordinates, blocks of airspace, and near constant coordination with ATC.

But as photofly pointed out, there's no actual existing CARs definition so you always run the risk of having to explain why you think it meets the requirement.

[wcpilot]

Coincidentally, I found this forthcoming change in the CARs in a CARAC document:
https://wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/Saf-Sec-Sur/2/ ... x?id=12310

CAR 400.01: There is currently no definition for the term “cross country flight” in this section. The proposed
amendments would include a definition that quantifies a cross country as a flight using standard navigation
procedures following a pre-planned route to a destination with at minimum a 25 nautical mile radius from the
point of departure.

Any idea when this might go into effect?

[photofly]

No. But if you use it as a definition from this point forward, nobody will argue. It’s not supposed to be a change as much as a clarification.

[chincenja]

I know this topic has been beaten to death several times so I apologize in advance for bringing it up again. I am going to be submitting my ATPL application soon. I have been renting an aircraft to build the night X-country PIC, and most likely I will end up with like ~25.2 hours. The question is, for all of those flights, I recorded the entire flight time as x-country. Could someone quibble with that and say that clearly there was at least a 0.2 for each flight that was on the ground and was not x-country?

I would prefer not to burn several hundred extra dollars for something annoying like this, on the other hand it would suck to have my application rejected for it. Anyone have any experience on this? Thanks!