Yeah, maybe the rule should be you either land OR drop ordinance on a point >50NM from departure field

 

For the purposes of ATP Cross Country (fly 50NM out, turn around and come back with 1 landing back at your departure airport)...

Departure/Destination airport (Class D) WX:
-BKN 800, 1 and 1/2 SM vis in Heavy Rain
-Special VFR to Depart the Delta
Enroute (Class E upwards from 1,200ft AGL)
-OVC 900ft 1 1/2 SM Vis
-Every 5-10 miles or so you have a town (congested area) which you must circumvent and then get back on course in order to remain legally above your min altitude (500 ft AGL) while remaining Clear of Clouds
Overfly Point 51 NM away from you departure airport
-Point Falls within an area where Class E extends down to 700ft AGL
-You must descent to 600ft AGL to remain legal (clear of clouds in the Class G).

Turn around and fly home the same way.

I won't dispute the fact that some pilots do take advantage of this rule derived for military pilots and I agree 100% that a cross country is meant to demonstrate that you can navigate however, don't think for one second that a 51 NM round robin (for that matter, a 20 mile round robin in these conditions) isn't enough to prove that you can navigate from point A to point B.

Lastly, if you think this is unrealistic, don't fly cargo in the Pacific NW.

 

Isn't better to log all point to point as cross country and when you are going to do the IACRA 8710 subtract the X-country less than 50nm??? And that's your cross-country for the purpose of flight training?

 

That's what I did when I was still a student and until I had the 500 XC hrs for ATP, I kept two separate columns in my logbook to note the difference, one for point to point and the other for >50NM. That way, I could track my XC time for Part 135 Mins and still track the XC required for ATP. Now that I have reached 500hrs XC for the purposes of ATP (and I have all my other pilot licenses) I just track point to point. When asked on my ATP 8710 to list my cross country time, I will simply put 500hrs and show the examiner the last page of my >50NM XC column where is says 500hrs and be done with it! Claiming more time that the min requirements is an added bonus where if you lost your logbook, you could retrieve more of your lost time via the 8710, you do not HAVE to put you most up to date times as long as you still meet the min requirements.

 

I only logged greater than 50 n.m. cross country time, but about half of my time was cross country when I got to 1500. I was very intentional in making sure I had plenty of cross country time once I got there!

 

In my case I have about 690 X-country time (from point to point) but I'm sure that at least 575 X-country are more than 50nm...so not big. Just like everything else...keep a good situational awareness with your logbook.