Originally Posted by
Engineer Pilot
My CFII assumed from reading the FAR's x-country definition that logging cross country meant YOU had to "land at an airport of 50 NM away" and if there was no landing logged (i.e. your buddy did the landing) then NONE of the flight could be logged as x-country. So if I was safety pilot for the entirity of the 70 NM leg back home this would only be counted as PIC time and NOT x-country (b/c no landing). Or if I flew part of the leg and didn't land then this would NOT count as x-country (b/c no landing).
No, this is incorrect... when I'm acting as a CFI, I still log all X/C flights as X/C PIC even though I often never touch the controls, much less do a landing. If you can legally log the PIC time, then any conditions of flight (Night, X/C, Instrument, etc) may be logged as well.