Originally Posted by
JestersDead
I've been flying for over 20 years and have all my times in physical logbooks since day one. During review of my logs, and in retrospect, there were flights that I logged as SIC that I wish I had not. It's too late to take it out now. This could be a potential red flag to a perspective interviewer as I am currently looking at various regional airlines. At the time of the flights, the company I was sitting right seat for told me it was ok to log the time as SIC. Of course I wished now that I got a second opinion. I've read many LOI and I can't really get a straight answer. The airplane was single pilot certified but the operation required someone in the right seat. Any suggestions on how to explain if it comes up (which I'm sure it will)? It was 40 hours SIC out of 2400 total time. I've been through 5 check rides since logging the hours and it never came up when the examiners were going through my logs. Wished I did my homework earlier. What to do?
It's probably OK to log if the company required it because they had a 135 OPSPEC which specified a second pilot, although even that has been debated. If it was required by company policy or insurance, without any FAA authorization, that's a no-go.
You can remove it from your totals, by making a one-time logbook entry with today's date, subtract out the time (and any associated conditions such as night or IMC, landings or approaches), and make a note explaining that it was logged in error. In theory you could keep the total time (FAA does not actually define total time) but I would subtract that as well because employers are not interested in grey-area total time.
Or you could leave it in your logbook, but not use that time on resumes or job applications. You would want to explain to any employer reviewing your logbook what happened, should be a non-event for most if you didn't use that time to get an interview and explain it up-front at an interview (but don't mention it if they never ask for your logbook).
This is a another great reason for electronic logbook... you can fix stuff like this really easily, and you just keep a list of errors from the paper book which were corrected in the e-book in case anyone asks. For my one recent interview I brought a print-out of my e-book. I also had all my paper books but they never asked for those.