Max Flight time you can log

[flyhigh008]

Hello
I was wondering if there is a max flight time you are allowed to add to your air time when logging in the journey log or your log book. For example if the time taken for start up, taxi, run up, atc delays, lining up behind a few aircraft on the taxiway happens to be 30-45 minutes total, is there a maximum time you can log on the ground? If your flight is only 20 minutes in the air and you were on the ground for 45 minutes beforehand that would be 1.1 of flight time. I understand flight time is engine on to engine off but I was told that the max you can log on the ground is 0.4 no matter how long your air time was. Is this true?
Thanks

[200hr Wonder]

I have done a 12 min air time flight with 1.3 flight time. Between driving and departure delays and gate delays in the other side. It is what it is. Perhaps if your worried for licensing make a note of why in your logbook.

[AOW]

I understand flight time is engine on to engine off but I was told that the max you can log on the ground is 0.4 no matter how long your air time was. Is this true?

The definition is close, but not quite exactly, engine start to engine stop:

flight time means the time from the moment an aircraft first moves under its own power for the purpose of taking off until the moment it comes to rest at the end of the flight

So the clock does not start until brake release, and if you are taxiing, not for the purpose of taking off, then it does not count. There is no maximum listed, but I would agree that an explanation may be in order for significant differences between air time and flight time, if you are applying for a licence.

[Schooner69A]

Flights logged over the last 5 + decades: Wheels up to wheels down plus "point 2" regardless of the taxi time. Little different with rotary wing, but similar. And if aircraft doesn't leave ground for some reason, no time logged...

[photofly]

I was told that the max you can log on the ground is 0.4 no matter how long your air time was. Is this true?
Thanks

No. Log first movement to shutdown, as someone described. CARs are quite clear on that.

[ahramin]

As others have said, the CARs are clear. You just have to take the time to find the applicable regulations.

In any case, it's not as if your logbook has the air time in it, so how would the large difference between air and flight time be noticed?

[Black_Tusk]

In flight school, if it was on the hobbs I logged it. If I was paying for it, it went in the book.

703, we had no hobbs so the standard was to add a .2 to the flight time (wheels up/down times).

in 705, I log the block time which is brake release to brake set. Sometimes that can be an hour of taxing/deicing/flow delays etc.

[av8ts]

Sometimes with delays at the deice pad over an hour on the ground before takeoff and a few days ago landing YYZ after a ground stop almost 2 hours waiting for a gate. It all gets logged. That's how I get paid

[trey kule]

I am always a bit surprised that every pilot does not know how to properly log flight time.

Brakes off to brakes on is flight time. ( movement)
Essentially wheels up to wheels on is air time( this is not exact but close enough).

Helicopters...flight time and air time are the same! Gets real confusing because they typically charge flight time as the whole time the engine is running.

It is not master on to master off.
It is not hobbs time, though lots of FTUs log it that way.
And, despite what has been posted you do not add .2. To the hobbs time, if your are logging it that way

Really quite simple. Log it as it really is.

The biggest problem is from confusion caused by billing time referred to as flight time.

Now as to your question. The good folks at TC have an idea of how long some a flights should normally take, and I expect if they see to many unusual numbers, they might just do a bit more checking with JL's...particularily if the required time just is hitting the very minimum..

The only person you are initially fooling is yourself if you plan to pad your flight times, which is one reason the FTU's got TC to agree to the hobbs time. Well, only yourself until you get hired based on a logbook of padded times. Lots and lots on pilots out there that should start their logbooks out with the first line saying. " once upon a time"

Do yourself , and all your poor unsuspecting pax a big favour, and log it accurately.

[Schooner69A]

Trey Kule: "And, despite what has been posted you do not add .2."

And yet, for nearly sixty years of flying, that is what I have been doing. Wheels up to wheels down plus 10 minutes for taxi. (And that is surprisingly accurate over the course of a year) I suppose I could write down four sets of times on my cuff, but it's easier to do it my way.

I don't actually note the exact time off; when I get back to the hangar, I check my 496 for the time airborne. When I fill in the journey log, I pick an up and down time that's convenient and then add point 2 for flight time.

I'm not sure why the brouhaha about flight time anyway... It doesn't have to be kept in the journey log, only in your log book. I'm sure TC is not going to give a tinker's dam about shorting yourself on ground time...

Or am I missing something? (Wouldn't be the first time...)

[photofly]

Trey Kule: "And, despite what has been posted you do not add .2."

And yet, for nearly sixty years of flying, that is what I have been doing. Wheels up to wheels down plus 10 minutes for taxi. (And that is surprisingly accurate over the course of a year)

If you don't write down the correct times, how would you know??

[Broker]

Padding of logbooks becomes very apparent with age and time in industry and missing skills and knowledge. You are only lying to yourself if padding is your choice. It used to be called P-51 time. Named for the pen, not the plane. Yes, the Cars are clear but anything more than .2 per sector is a stretch.

[trey kule]

703, we had no hobbs so the standard was to add a .2 to the flight time (wheels up/down times).

Schooner....I was referring to this post from black tusk.

Read it carefully. He is addining .2 to the "flight time"
Which he defined as wheels up to wheels fown!

I am gobsmacked that any licensed pilot does not know the difference between flight time and air time. It really is not that difficult.

[Black_Tusk]

703, we had no hobbs so the standard was to add a .2 to the flight time (wheels up/down times).

Schooner....I was referring to this post from black tusk.

Read it carefully. He is addining .2 to the "flight time"
Which he defined as wheels up to wheels fown!

I am gobsmacked that any licensed pilot does not know the difference between flight time and air time. It really is not that difficult.

You know what I meant. I just used the wrong term.

[Schooner69A]

Photofly: "If you don't write down the correct times, how would you know??"

I don't actually note the exact time off; I look at the Skyview for the nearest "5" and when I get back to the hangar, I check my 496 for the time airborne. When I fill in the journey log, I pick an up and down time that's convenient and then add point 2 for flight time.

Doesn't matter much anymore about exact flight time anyway; the only thing I'm worried about is time airborne for the engine...

BTW: I knew what BT meant from the comment in brackets...

[NotDirty!]

Rounding up and adding an arbitrary 0.2 can lead to some problems. One that stands out in my memory went something like this... The crew was doing a very quick flight - only 6 miles across a river. Their up time was 12:54, but they didn't catch that quite right, so they recorded 12:50. They landed at 12:58, but rounded that off to 13:00. Their air time was actually only 4 minutes, but they recorded it in the logbook as 10 minutes, which becomes 0.2 in the decimal system. They then added 0.2 to the airtime to get flight time, so the flight was recorded as a 0.4! In actual fact, the time from start to stop was only 9 minutes!

They then went on to do a quick turn, and took off again at 13:15, and landed at 13:48. 33 minutes is 0.6 hours, and by adding .2 to get flight time, their flight was 0.8 hours. So this means that between 12:50 and 13:50 they logged 1.2 hours of flight time! I am sure that someone can explain this through time dilation, as the speed of the C208 approaches c.

Our flight plans have us record times for OUT, OFF, ON, and IN; I have seen elsewhere START, UP, DOWN, and STOP used in the same way. The most accurate method to calculate air time and flight time is ON minus OFF = Air Time; IN minus OUT = Flight Time. In my experience, in our operation, the difference between air time and flight time at small, quiet, uncontrolled airports is almost always either 0.1 or 0.2; on average probably slightly less than 0.15. This number goes up significantly at busy major airports, and can easily reach 0.5 or more at places such as YYZ.


This method also comes in handy when you make a mathematical error calculating air time... if you calculate flight time and it is less than the air time you calculated, then you go back and double check your math! I saw a flight recently, 28 minutes of air time. This was recorded as a 0.5 (correctly), but the pilot must have misread his/her own printing, because the 0.5 looked a bit like a 0.8, and the flight time was recorded as 1.0! Had they taken STOP minus START and found that this had been 36 minutes, they probably would have caught this error, but that arbitrary 0.2 led to an extra 24 minutes of flight time recorded. Now in this case, the pilot was flying single pilot IFR, so restricted to 8.0 hours of Flight Time per 24 hour period. By introducing these errors and extra flight time, over the course of a 6-8 sector day, it brought the pilot very close to that limit, and led to more problems the following day, keeping under 8.0 in a rolling 24 hour period.

[ahramin]

Schooner69A, if you don't bother to record the takeoff and landing time, why bother to invent something to write down? It's not as if a time is required.

[AuxBatOn]

The 0.2 technique evens itself out in the long run. Sometimes, I spend 4 minutes taxiing total. Sometimes, I have spent 45 minutes holding short. And a few times, I taxied with the intent to takeoff but had to ground abort (I don't log those). I bet the average is probably above 0.3 on top of air time.

[Schooner69A]

Ahramin: "It's not as if a time is required."

Well, you have to put something in the journey log just to keep track of engine time, don't you? Don't need to keep a personal log anymore, but I do...

[confusedalot]

My vote is for what is stated in the CAR's. As silly as it may sound to some, when operating at high density airports where 15 to 45 minute taxi is the norm ( many times even longer), only for a 35 minute air time flight, all of that ground time counts as flight time and is entered in the journey log as such. That's how it's done in the airline business.

[cdnpilot77]

Just this week I had a 1.5 Air time and a 3.2 flight time. It seems everyone in the world wanted to depart the Nashville area an hour after the solar eclipse. It is what it is and the CARS are quite clear on this as stated above.

[ahramin]

Ahramin: "It's not as if a time is required."

Well, you have to put something in the journey log just to keep track of engine time, don't you? Don't need to keep a personal log anymore, but I do...

Time of day. I too use the GPS time, which I also back up with takeoff time and a chrono running for fuel timer but once on the ground, the takeoff and landing times get recycled.

As for the adding .2 discussion, that's way way more time than I spend on the ground. It's a rare flight for me that has me on the ground more than 8 minutes and I log what I actually do, not some made up number. The odd time I have spend more time on the ground, that gets logged that way as well. I don't mind anyone just adding .2, that's probably the way you learned it in flight school, but it really isn't difficult logging reality.

[rigpiggy]

I've done many YYZ-YGK or YZR of 3.5+ block due to the central delay facility. I'm paid block time, or 1/2 duty time, or 4 hrs min, if there is an accident, TC will look up our block times, woe betide I am over my FDTL's.

[valleyboy]

Experience levels are so low these days I think all log book time should be based on air time. That maybe help to have actual 1500 hour captains on a -8

[Schooner69A]

Ahramin:

As mentioned, I've been using .2 for decades. May have started in the military although I can't remember if there was a two columns or just one for flying time. Might have started with the Cold Lake Flying Club... Can't remember. Suppose I could have used .1 (five minutes) but with piston airplanes, what with fire-up, taxi out, warm-up, run-up, and subsequent taxi back at trip end, .2 seemed appropriate.

Helicopter flying was "pitch pull" to skids down. Although, if I landed somewhere and would down to flight idle for any length of time, I didn't count the ground time.

There was a comment about 35 minutes on the ground counting as flight time because that's the way the airlines do it. Seeing as one's pay is based upon it, I can support it; however, in my little non-airline career world (604 operation), that would still get a .2...

By underreporting the ground time, the only loser is me, but I can only fall back on the Rhett Butler line... (;>0)