Originally Posted by
GMK35
A lot of opinions in this thread are not valid. Short answer, yes you can (.3 is arbitrary, though not wrong, just wanted to be clear it’s not an FAA-defined number). Here’s the why:
14 CFR 1.1 defines loggable flight time as “Pilot time that commences when an aircraft moves under its own power for the purpose of flight and ends when the aircraft comes to rest after landing.” The mil tracks only airborne time because, reasons. His mil records are purposely missing all the legally loggable time from start of taxi to takeoff and from landing to parking. That is all legal time he should be accounting for FAA purposes. Also, XC time specifically for ATP does not require a landing at another airfield, meaning all sorties he flew > 50 nm in a straight line at some point during the sortie is loggable XC time (ref 61.1 (b)(vi)).
To get his restriction lifted, he will have to fill out an 8710-1, which includes a section to fill in all applicable hours (total, night, XC, etc). When he fills out these hours, make them in accordance with 14 CFR 1.1, 61.1 (b)(vi), and 61.159. Currently his mil records are NOT logged IAW those FARs. To make them IAW the FARs, he will have to determine which sorties meet XC time definition (XC is not logged in the mil) and determine how much time he spent from taxi to takeoff/land to park on each sortie. Big picture, 0.3 on each sortie is MASSIVELY conservative (so go for it) and XC probably applies to 90% of his sorties (not to many mil sorties are pattern only/didn’t include flying > 50 nm in a straight line using various nav techniques).
Lastly, this is ONLY for purposes of the ATP discussion. This is not a recommendation to do this for a job application. Delta specifically says do not add a sortie factor (and I believe several other airlines say the same). Debatable if that’s legal (because they’re telling you not to put down legally loggable time), but I can also see their side in the sense they want control over the “time correction.” In the end, this is what we’re talking about, correcting logbook “errors” (not an error in the mil world, but definitely an error in the civ world).
Yeah we all know all that.
The issue is justifying a blanket conversion factor applied to all time because you didn't log each leg in your own book. Perfectly reasonable to most of us, but not in compliance with how the FAA expects us to log time for their purposes.
Those of us who have experience on the civilian side have an intuitive understanding of how capricious, inconsistent, and personality-driven the FAA can be.
My suggested work-around, again: Go back and build a civilian book and log each mil leg/sortie, you probably have some memorable flights where you know the taxi time went over 0.3. There's no statute of limitations as to when you fill out a logbook, it will only take a few hours, and it will CYA.
As far as employers go, follow their specific instructions. Different animal.
Now with all that said you can legally log anything you want, in any manner you want. The issue only comes into play when you apply that time to an 8710 for purposes of part 61 aeronautical experience... if it goes on an 8710, you'd better have records to back it up, satisfactory to the FAA. That last part is what I'm getting at.
It's too bad the word doesn't seem to trickle down to mil students, that would be the time to know this stuff, not when you show up to a legacy interview with a box of dot-matrix printouts.
If you personally applied a conversion factor to get your ATP years ago, I wouldn't lose any sleep over that, it's exceptionally unlikely they'd go back and audit anything and I agree you have the moral high ground.