Question: I depart my home airport and fly 30 miles to another airport, get out and go to the bathroom/get a drink, and then fly to another airport 50 miles away. Finally I fly back to my home base which is 30 miles from my last stop. Total flight time: 1 hour. As far a cross-country requirements for a commercial certificate( or instrument rating), can I log 1 hour of cross-country time or can I only log the time that was flown on the 50-mile leg? Thanks for your help!

 

You can log the whole time, so long as the 50 NM req. is met on at least one of the legs.

I am almost positive that 141 regs state that it must be from your "point of departure" though...

 

Lax is correct, not sure about 141.

 

Thanks so far for the replies. So just to clarify, can I count a full hour towards the 50 hours of x/c needed for the instrument rating? I understand how it would count as an "x/c" flight towards a private certificate because of the whole requirement of a "x/c flight with atleast one leg no shorter than 50 nm, etc" thing, amd i know that for a commercial certificate i need to do one that is something like 250 nm, but im talking about the hour requirements of x/c time, not the flights with a minimum distance required. Sorry if im confusing you, i just want to get this right so i dont waste a lot of money on flights that cant be counted in total towards x/c time towards an instrument rating or commercial certificate. Thanks!

 

Most ratings have a requirement for one or more specific "xc trips" to be flown, read the regs for the details of each of these. IIRC, any flight that meets rating-specific trip requirements also will count as XC total time.

Most ratings also require a certain amount of "xc flight time". It sounds like you want to ensure that any required XC flights you do also apply towards total XC time.

For the basic ratings, in order to count XC TOTAL TIME you must land (or T&G) at an airport 50 NM or greater from the point of origin in order for the flight to count. If you meet this requirement the ENTIRE flight counts...

-50NM means STRAIGHT LINE, not flight planned route. We had a small patch that was exactly 50NM from the home base, but I didn't use that one because some feds seemed to think it was 49.5 NM.

-Intermediate stops are OK, you don't have to fly non-stop.

-It does not have to be there and back by the same route, as long as you land once at a point 50NM away, the entire flight and all legs count as XC. Triangular (or octagonal) routes are fine.

-You do not have to return to base.

-Note: If you stop for lunch or gas that is still one flight. However it is not clearly defined how long a stop you can have and still count it all as one flight. My recomendation would be to start a "new" flight if you overnight. If you overnight try to do it at least 50NM from home base so the return leg can also count as XC.

 

Rickair is right here. As long as the destination airport is 50nm straight line distance from your departure, you can stop at every airport inbetween. This was covered in one of the Flight Training Magazine's Articles by Rod Machado, if I can remember which one I will let you know.

 

What are you using this cross country time for? Certificates and Ratings...(like said beofore) is 50 nm away.

However for everything else...its just to another airport...no matter how far, as long as you use some sort of nav...including pilotage and ded-reckoning!
So if you look out the window once on your way to that airport 5 miles away...BAM....x-country!

 

K, what about this? An airport that I flew to awhile back was what i thought exactly 50 nm away. However, if you measure it with the plotter's edge set right on the runway diagram, then it ends up a bit short. Since I measured it from the outside edge of the magenta circle that contains the runway diagram, it ended up being 50 miles. To make things more complicated, I went to airnav.com and looked up the distance between the two airports--it came up as 49.1 nm. What would you do? Play it safe and not count it as x/c time, or round up less than a mile and count it. I know there isnt necessarily one right answer, but im just worried bout it coming back to bite me in the ass. As always, thanks for any input!

 

If AirNav/AOPA/DUAT don't measure it as AT LEAST 50 miles, don't use it. If it comes up to 49.9 miles, that's still not 50.

 

That's what I did, I used duats to verify any "close" X-C's for my students. Remember, duats is approved source by the FAA, so therefor, the numbers it gives are going to be the ones they use, vs. your calculation with a plotter