XC Question

[Tango01]

Do you have to land at an airport in order for your trip to be considered a "cross country"? For example, if I depart YKZ to do sightseeing around Niagara Falls, and come back to YKZ, would TC accept that if counted as cross country?

[ptc]

My understanding for XC time is that you can log anything that takes you 25NM or more from your departure airport. You do not have to land at another airport.

Good example is doing diversions with students and not landing anywhere but at your departure airport at the end of the flight

[Aeros]

Do you have to land at an airport in order for your trip to be considered a "cross country"? For example, if I depart YKZ to do sightseeing around Niagara Falls, and come back to YKZ, would TC accept that if counted as cross country?

TC does not have a definition for cross-country flight time. (There have been numerous threads asking this question.) The FAA has a rather complete set of definitions for cross-country -- That is where many folks get the distance references that they quote. The FAA requires that you actually land at a different aerodrome than the one from which you depart.

My advice to you -- if you can explain how the trip required a skill that you learned as part of Exercise 23 (Navigation) call it X/C. If you can't honestly claim to have used one of those skills don't call it X/C.

[Walker]

We were told by TC that if you do a groundspeed check on your way out to the practice area it can be counted as XC. Im not 100% sure Id agree with THAT but it is what we were told.

[Redneck_pilot86]

Another XC question, when logging XC time, do you use air time or flight time?

ST

[wallypilot]

If you're logging it for your experience towards a license or permit, the CARS state "flight time". Therefore log flight time. once you have your ATPL, then who really cares about logging it anyways.

[Right Seat Captain]

I used the common sense approach. If you are doing a x-country, or navigation practice (as in diversion), log it as X-country. The other way to look at it is if you have to pull out the map to not get lost, then it's probably x-country.

If you're an experienced pilot that's taking a trip to an airport that you can practically see once airborne from your destination point, and can get there in your sleep, it's probably not x-country. A new pilot doing the same trip needing to navigate there, might consider it x-country.