Fenderbean

That's one of the unique things about our job, just about everything is cross country when you look at the distances we travel in a three hour bag of gas. To make it easy anything PC Combat will be cross county PIC time. Plus don't forget based on the FAA time logging you can add about a .2 to everything.

rickair7777

I get that's it reasonable, but you might run into a Fed or employer who is not reasonable. I would try to avoid admitting that's it's an estimate.

Another poster mentioned he knew 800 hours in Iraq were all XC because of the geometry.... that's a fact even if he didn't log it at the time, and he could get out a map and prove it to a reasonable degree. That's a better way to do it if you can.

Just be careful with that one.

BeatNavy

To play devil’s advocate to the combat = XC time, I saw plenty of hawks that did not travel 50nm (92km) from the point of departure in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ones on ring routes generally did, but often times on air assaults, medevacs, KLEs, etc, the total straight line distance didn’t exceed 50nm, the requirement for cross country time to be logged for an airplane ATP.

Also, no CFR says you can add .2 to army or mil logging. AR95-1 and the FAA have similar logging definitions. CFR 1.1 covers it: “Flight time means1) 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.” While civilians generally use Hobbs meters to log time, the definition is clear and doesn’t differ from army logging other than the army lets you log until the engine is shutdown. AIRLINES allow conversions for military sorties, but that exists in large part because the Air Force doesn’t allow for much (any?) taxi time to be logged, so airlines allow for a predetermined conversion per sortie to be used to include taxi time that is otherwise allowable in civilian logs.

I know one fighter dude who had 1400 hours and wanted an unrestricted ATP when doing an airline initial, so the FSDO and APD required him to make a logbook that showed each sortie and taxi time to make/add 100 hours to his Air Force recorded time. He had no record of it before, but was allowed to prove that his taxi time allowed by FAA logging allowed him to have the 1500 hour minimum. Obviously he had to estimate that. But that isn’t applicable to army helicopter dudes since our army time counted taxi time.

Big Windy

I'm hesitant to do this one. I know some airlines have their own conversion that they will add, but others do not so I plan on not adding anything to mine.

BeatNavy

That’s smart. Your 759 needs to match your logbook period dot. Any discrepancies need to be taken care of by flight ops before your final close out. If you bring a 759 that differs from your personal army logbook, or if any conversions were done on your own and not specifically authorized by the airline, your interview probably won’t go very well (except maybe at regionals who will hire anyone).

Hobbit64

I just interviewed with a major and made a spread sheet detailing my times with sortie count for PC and PI time that delineated an aggregate or raw flight time breakdown with a 0.3/sortie column right next to it. I set it up so that I can just update the times ( PC or PI ) and sortie counts and the formulas take care of all the rest. If you take the time to develop a good spread sheet, it make it very easy to update your Airline Apps or Pilot Creds on a 10 hour basis when you're on overnights.

Additionally, I made a block on the spreadsheet that showed how the difference between my 759 and my personal logbook occurred. Incorrect/lazy flight ops personnel, Co-Pilot times, missions not logged because Flt Ops closed before the flying stopped in theater etc. Other than Co-Pilot time, I had about 50 hours to account for out of over 7000 hours and it wasn't a problem at all with the spread sheet detailing the deviation down to 0.0 (Blutasky's Grade point average). I had both set up so that I did not have to be present to explain the deviation. Also, the 759 had more time than my logbooks.

Fenderbean

You seem to do that with my post, my deployment in Iraq area of operation was over that, every day we took off and flew 40mins SE to hit the farp before we even started operations. Afghanistan was very similar flying up the Kunar and to all the other FOBs around area the region. Im a 64 guy we dont run the daily FOB hop routes like lift and normally travel long distances responding to TICs or just doing recons and escorts and easily over fly the 50nm stretch daily. As for the .2 because u posted what the civilians log vs Army. Army guys that follow AR 95-1 cannot log time until we lift of the ground, it normally takes about 5-10 minutes of ground taxi to do HIT checks and various checklist items, civilians start as soon as the meter starts ticking or the plane rolls for taxi. Some companies will just do a 5% conversion for this as well.

I’m not trying to be tricking or beat the system, the things I have mentioned are common and also suggested to me from a current PSA pilot who has done this process himself.

hydrostream

I've kept a personal logbook since my first flight after flight school. It was accurate to the .1 up until I left my last unit. At some point, and I have no idea what happened, I lost about 150 hours worth of flight time in the Army digital logs. I talked to our records guy and he's willing to try and get some of it back, but he's hesitant to decertify and correct all of it since I don't have my original -12 printouts showing they were there. Totally understandable.

So anyways, I've applied to a couple airlines now. On my applications I have used only the flight time from my Army records. My big question is in regards to cross country time. The only place I have tracked that is in my personal log, so if they ask to see it they are going to see the disparity in my total time. Any guidance on how I should handle this? Re-do my personal log to mirror my Army logs and eat the flights that aren't in there? I don't want to look like I'm trying to get away with something.

BeatNavy

If you have a logbook of all your individual flights, print it out and find the discrepancies and ask FLOPS to fix it. That said, 150 is a lot, and should have been corrected prior to ETS/retiring. I know how hard that is, as I fought the special folks in flight ops annually screwing up my times, on top of the army computers screwing them up. I had a very detailed logbook starting after flight school, showed it all, and got around 35 hours back on my last close out. Just says something along the lines of “35 hours added for flight hour corrections, certified by 1LT so and so.”

If your flight ops won’t change it, I’d adjust your personal logbook that you provide to airlines to match your 759. Keep that time for you, but for them I’d make them match. Probably not a huge deal, but could raise some eyebrows with interviewers, especially non-mil guys who don’t understand how bad the army’s system is. They could think that you can’t keep your records straight, or worse, that you are misrepresenting your flight time. Worst case, 150 hours of helo time likely won’t make a difference for any airline apps...if you meet mins at a regional you are good, and your helo time won’t count for much at the majors.

Try to use just the 759, and if they ask, have your XC time from your logbook listed somewhere that you can claim XXX hours of XC from. Perhaps a simple logbook entry with single line entries for each acft flown in the army (matching your 759), and XC for each acft from your detailed logbook. Avoids your flight by flight logbook and associated discrepancies being an issue, and you can legitimately and accurately list your XC time in those single line entries.

hydrostream

Thanks for the tips. It's very frustrating since I have kept on top of it for every closeout and aligned my logbook every year. I expected to lose flights throughout the year, which I always had to make corrections for close-outs, but always thought once closed out those records were safe. Not the case!

From what it looks like reviewing my flights vs -12 printout, most of these lost flights are when we had to make paper entries that were added into the system later. Cross countries, field exercises, RIP in Afghanistan, etc.

It doesn't impact my minimums for airlines, as even with my lost time I'm over 1,500 hours. It sucks to lose almost a year's worth of flight time but like I said my biggest concern is making sure my records are straight.