Cross Country differences explained
1. When building XC time for a flight rating, only flights which included a landing at an airport at least 50nm from the "Original Point of Departure" count as cross country.
2. When applying for your ATP certificate, any flights greater than 50nm straight-line distance from your departure airport are counted as cross country, even if you don't land at another airport. That means if you fly tours more than 50nm away, but only land at the same airport you departed from, you can count that as cross country when applying for an Airline Transport Pilot certificate.
3. When it comes to Part 135 operations (freight, cargo, etc.), any time that you land at an airport different from the airport of departure can be counted as cross country. Some people log this different than others. Technically you should only count the time it took to go from one airport to another, however, most pilots count the entire time they were airborn before they landed as part of that "airport to airport / point to point" cross country. By doing this, you could takeoff, fly around for an hour, and then land at an airport right next to the one you departed and count the entire flight as cross country. This is not really the correct way to log this time, but most people DO log it this way and most companys don't care one way or another. Just make sure that you log it in a seperate column from your normal 50nm XC time.