Don't buy CrewLounge / MCC Pilot Log
 

To anyone looking at options for digital logbook, don't waste your money on CrewLounge PilotLog. I had the old MCC PilotLog software and when they all of a sudden stopped supporting the interface with my airline (Alaska), I was duped into buying into buying a license on their new CrewLounge software. What a wast of time and money. I could go on and on but suffice to say, it does not import my flights from Alaska and they don't respond to support issues.

I guess it's time to break down and go back to LogTenPro.... where I started about 10 years ago.

The old software (mccPilotLog) was at least acceptable for a one-time cost. From what I could tell after the switchover, the new one doesn't look that different. There's no way I'd pay a subscription for it with so many other (much more polished) options.

You mean my lifetime license is about useless now? Man... Never anticipated that happening....

I recently had to bite the bullet and go back to LogTenPro, despite how much I hated the cost, however they are amazing over there and fixed everything for me. Such great software and support staff. I understand why you pay what you pay now after trying out a bunch of others.

Anyone have a PIREP for Safelog?

The author of MCC Pilot Log committed the common sin in the software business of switching the terms of their contract with their customers when it no longer suited them, when they should have simply open-sourced the old app and built something new and proved to their customers that it was worth the terms of the subscription to gain access to the new product. But some companies choose to be lazy rather than innovate, and hope and pray in the process that their customers will just bend over and take it. You can only get away with that sh!t if you have a world-class product. Clearly that is not the case here.

I evaluated MCC Pilot Log, LogTen Pro, and SafeLog. MCC Pilot Log was discarded before they shot themselves in the foot because of its 1990's era, buggy interface so if MCC dies on the vine, I don't think anyone will really miss it. LogTen Pro was discarded primarily due to the price and lock-in to the overpriced Apple ecosystem. I would have bought LogTen if they provided multi-platform support. Ultiimately I chose SafeLog because it's well performing, reasonably-priced, and multi-platform. I bought five years of SafeLog for $150 and if they continue to run their business the way they do I'll re-up in a few years. For all intents and purposes it's a subscription model without the terms of a subscription, but at less than 1/3 the price of LogTen I'll gladly pay it.

The old software worked well enough and I would have been ok with paying for the new lifetime license but it just stopped working. I was being lazy I guess, decided to stick with what I had. I had my complaints but I didn't think these guys would lie and steal my money. I'm left with a program that doesn't do it's job. Very disappointing.

I don't personally use this yet but is Foreflight's logbook an acceptable alternative for career pilots?

I use MCCPilotLog and will need to switch. Here’s my issue: I log time on the app using the FMS out and in time which is logged in hours and minutes. On my paper logbooks, I always logged using hours and decimals. MCCPilotLog keeps everything in the background in hours and minutes. When I try to print the logbook out using decimal, the individual flights manually added up can be .1 or .2 off from the totals at the bottom due to rounding differences. Do any of the other electronic logbooks do this? I’d rather have things add up correctly for interview purposes.


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I use it and haven’t had problems at interviews or with FAA

I’m extremely happy with safelog. It takes a bit of effort to set it up to work for you, but the whole garbage in, garbage or saying comes to mind. Once you have the setup done, logging is pretty straightforward and customizable. I can give you a code for a discount if you’re interested, just shoot me a pm. I used LBP before and was not happy with the interface.

I have been using the mccpilotlog free version for about a year now and I'm actually glad this whole situation happened before I paid for anything. I'm a few months behind now that I've been in limbo on switching logbook software. Does anyone know if safelog or any other alternatives work to pull info from Envoy's system?

what’s envoys system? Per Safelog it supports AIMS, Flica, Skedplus, Crewlink, Crewdock, and CrewConneX. Roster Buster and similar are supported according to the support docs for Safelog.


Heres a Safelog referral link if anyone wants to go for it. Full stop, I get an extension, and you would get some extra time as well.

http://www.safelogweb.com/PilotTellA...52aXRlcj10cnVl

Envoy is virtually the only system in the world that cant be pulled from. You will have to do it manually.

While I’m sure it has more to do with apathy from those that could make it happen, I can’t help but think it’s intentional to make it more difficult for pilots at Envoy to keep their apps up to date find a better job.

I used MCCPilotLog for the last 10 years and have been very happy with it, then they introduced the new version 5 where they tried to get rid of the 32bit ecosystem. They released the platform way too early and without any testing that i can see. And i believe they felt they needed to release it since they have been promising a release since 2015.
The new version was a disaster, however, the old one still worked and unless you were in a desperate need to print your logbook, for an interview etc..., there was no real need to stress. Just wait it out and get it when its fixed. They eventually fixed it well enough for it to work, there are still some minor bugs, but those are easily handled by a few extra clicks once in a blue moon.
The new version DOES NOT allow you do download the schedule from the computer and their response to that is that they are trying to keep the roster very streamlined and trying to limit the number of ways to get it so that they do not have to maintain multiple interfaces, makes sense and is not a big deal.
I go to my iPhone, download my roster and i choose to update each flight once i have my OOOI times. Takes me 20seconds to do. And i use the desktop app to pull reports and print the logbook.

I was very unhappy with the PilotLog software, but now its working good enough for me to use it again.

I wish this was the case. Neither the old software nor the new one will pull data from my airline.... and their support is non existent.... STAY AWAY!

EDIT: Looking at the original post i see you work for Alaska, they use Flica and i have friends at Endeavor who uses it. Are you sure you are not doing it wrong?

My airline uses AIMS and I have only successfully been able to download past flights once. It just hangs at the login page. For some reason, it is able to fetch the roster for the future.

Their customer service used to be pretty responsive, but in the last month or so it has gotten bad.

Makes me regret paying for a lifetime MCC licence, and then paying for the new crew lounge licence.

Does anyone have a new voucher for Safelog, thinking of giving it a go as MCC is not long for this world.

Quick question - what I liked about MCCpilotlog was that automatically downloaded my schedule and calculated night time etc etc, - does Safelog do that? ( from Flica )

I actually have two logbooks - Logbook Pro (pre airline) & MCC ( airline only), I tried to make a CSV file from MCC but what a mess and LP APDL system was to pricey and complicated when I tried it several years ago (hence the MCC purchase) - so is Safelog system simpler to use and is it one time purchase? (I may have missed it but it wasn't clearly stated on their website that I saw)

As someone who has been using MCC exclusively since 2009, i wonder what you mean by this. I know MCC screwed up majorly during the first implementation of version 5, however all those bugs seems to have been solved. And i really like the new way of logging flights. So what part do you feel is bad?

I haven't used it but on their website MCC literally won't take your money and directs you to a different site. Doesn't bode well for longevity but I don't see an immediate reason to change if it's working for you and have a secure backup stored elsewhere.

You have to manually pull your schedule unless you use something like rosterbuster to integrate with safelog to automatically do it for you

Thanks.
filler

They say MCC is no longer supported but you can buy our new improved version, three years for 120$.
I already bought a lifetime of MCC? Judging by the buggy pop-ups and confusing layout Im not really interested.

APDL is great once you have it all setup correctly. I am at a point now where once I finish a trip, it just takes few clicks of a mouse button exporting trip from APDL in a CSV format and import directly to Logbook Pro with a template set up for my columns.

Unforunately, APDL has gone up in price and I might be making the switch over to LogtenPro (requires a MacBook though....)

Everyone who bought the old MCC for life, was offered, either upgrade to the new one for life for free (if bought in 2019 and later) or to upgrade once for 120$ but it would be for life.
I bought the old one for life for 65$ back in 2009 and when the new one was released i bought it again for 120. Still much cheaper than logten pro.

Still not getting what your originally paid for in 2009.

It’s all the same with these logbook companies - price gouge a high income customer base for a simple database app. I left Logten 5 years ago and went with a spreadsheet (numbers/excel) stored on my iCloud Drive. Haven’t looked back since.

So? Ever heard of inflation? Companies got to make money somehow... Are we really that cheap, 11 years ago i spent the equivalent of one medical exam and it lasted 10 years before i now had to spend it again. You tip the drivers more in a couple of months than you need to in order to have a logbook for life.

Well I'm an idiot. After playing around with Safelog and Rooster buster, (Safelog won't grab your schedules from your airline so yet another vendor to pay) I got frustrated and upgraded MCC to new and improved Pilotlog. Big mistake, nothing is new and improved, in fact the UI is a step backwards, ugh. It's literally a cut-paste unrefined excel spreedsheet that you get to configure so you can read all the smashed up columns. Why is this so difficult.
What else is out there? Logten Pro?

What was wrong with safelog?

Rooster Buster is farm management software. That's your problem right there.

With Safelog, you just need to copy and paste your schedule from your scheduling software. For example, Flica users can just copy the text of their trip schedule and paste it into Safelog. It's not fully automatic, but the parsing works perfectly.

Ok I'll go ahead and say it - I'm probably in the 1% of pilots that isn't a math nerd or excel junkie.

So with that said - RE copy paste into Safelog, APDL was also supposed to be copy paste into LogBookPro I believe several years ago when I previewed it for free, I did not find it copy paste friendly (also add the expensive APDL to the negative column).

Referencing the above statement about how UN-nerdy I am... what do ya'll think is the easiest, user friendly electronic logbook.

I'll also add - when I tried to move my LogBookPro logs into MCC it wouldn't' accept them due to a lot of the entries being made up names we had for Helicopter Field Operations jobsites. I followed their how-to directions verbatim and tried to do it what I UN-nerdily thought was logical and just could not get it to work. Even sent them a copy of the CSV and what they sent me back didn't work.

Conversely, when the MCC decided to abandon ship on us lifetime purchasers - I followed LBPro directions verbatim and also utilizing google results and I could not get LBP to take my CSV file from MCC...

Is there any electronic logbook out there that is dummy proof that I can convert both of my logs relatively easily to AND also downloads (or copy pastes) your schedule with relative ease ?

Thanks

You can adjust the columns so not sure what you are talking about. It is similar to MCC< just an updated UI so now you can be seamless not matter what device you have.

It looks good, nice interface. Not liking that it won't import from my company, gave me a coupon to try roster buster free so I go there and no place to put in the coupon, just PP or CC links?
I tried to import one trip manually and it got completely hung up on a deadhead, they're built into our schedule with "o" block. It wants an A/C type for the deadhead and wouldn't advance or ignore that? I spent some time on that but needs attention.

Not really, I go to the import your roster with one click button and get the Skedplus interface only works with mobile device in big yellow letters? Why? It worked fine on MCC?
The home page is covered with big blank squares for flight/duty times and currencies, all empty and will stay that way, don't need that. A big weather blank on the bottom? umm, this is a log book. The flight time totals are smashed way over in a small box on the left hand side, the total box so small it can't display all the numbers? It's garbage, contracted out and built quickly by someone who has no idea. It's in no way shape or form an update to MCC, all the other crew lounge junk I don't want or need is the update, paid for by the former MCC lifetime buyers.

You can only sync from mobile, too many issues doing it from PC. Works fine, import on phone or ipad then sync. Yur desktop version will sync with that. I admit, even for my airline the roster/trip import worked better with MCC. But there arn't many better alternatives out there if you use a PC. Like you saw with Safelog,they all kind of suck.