Airline Guys, How do you log flights?

SixPapaCharlie

SixPapaCharlie

May the force be with you
Joined
Aug 8, 2013
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First Officer 6PC
I am updating my log book with my work flights and quickly learning I have flown 20 different tail numbers in a very short span of time.
I know the airline is keeping track and I can see it all but I log using myflightbook and I am also backing it up with a paper logbook.
Do you go lookup every tail number from your past flights and add them to your logbook?
Myflightbook requires a tail number and this is just enough work that I am wondering if it is bad to identify 1 tail number and use it exclusively since the type will always be the same.
 
Oh BOO HOO I’m an airline guy now and am having sooooo much trouble logging all my big boy jet time BOO HOOO HOOOO someone pls help me keep track of all my jet time waaaahh



giphy.gif


By the way, all this jet time is soooooo hard to keep track of boo hoo











jk, sorta
 
By the way, I probably won’t even have time to reply to this thread because I’m sooooo busy flying big jets.
 
Doc Holliday said:
Ask crew scheduling to give you a print out or email you a pdf.

I have a bag full of my logbooks in the closet. For years I kept one of these for each year.

View attachment 144725
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We (AF) got a printout annually from the people (HARM) that collected that info. I think BrYan would prefer a csv file format though so it’s easily importable to MFB; don’t know if that is available from his employer or not.

SixPapaCharlie said:
…
Myflightbook requires a tail number and this is just enough work that I am wondering if it is bad to identify 1 tail number and use it exclusively since the type will always be the same.
Click to expand...
That’s not a bad technique if you can’t get a CSV and do a batch import once a month or something.

I will there was usefulness in having a record of which jets had certain personality traits though which could trigger an exception to the generic tail #. For example -008 had overhead cabinets that resulted in preferring a non-standard crew seat to operate from. A different jet, I can’t remember which, was prone to a dutch roll-like condition so we tried to keep that one away from the training squadron due to the amount of airsickness it produced. I also logged the tail of each C-model I flew since those had a unique sensor capability. All that info was useful for me in more-so in mission planning than execution though.
 
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In my flight book, you have to add a new aircraft, assign the manufacturer, type, enter the tail number

1756915606639.png


Then it gets put into a droplist for you to select
1756915716460.png


It gets time consuming. Also over time, that droplist is going to be a mile long. Thus wondering if a place holder tail number is going to bite me later.
 
TCABM said:
We (AF) got a printout annually from the people (HARM) that collected that info. I think BrYan would prefer a csv file format though so it’s easily importable to MFB; don’t know if that is available from his employer or not.
Click to expand...
They provide the data to us but It doesnt include the tail numbers.
I wrote a program to scrape it and generate a MFB formatted spreadsheet so I can do a direct push to MFB but translating a flight number into a tail number is problematic.
OpenSky provides a free API but it has a window of only a couple hours where it will do the translation. So I have to manually go back to MFB and add the plane for my auto logger to work.
The placeholder tail number will solve this problem but I don't know if at some point I will have to explain why I flew the same plane around for 5000 hours. Do airline guys just rely on the company logs for the commercial stuff and log their GA seperately?
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
They provide the data to us but It doesnt include the tail numbers.
I wrote a program to scrape it and generate a MFB formatted spreadsheet so I can do a direct push to MFB but translating a flight number into a tail number is problematic.
OpenSky provides a free API but it has a window of only a couple hours where it will do the translation. So I have to manually go back to MFB and add the plane for my auto logger to work.
The placeholder tail number will solve this problem but I don't know if at some point I will have to explain why I flew the same plane around for 5000 hours. Do airline guys just rely on the company logs for the commercial stuff and log their GA seperately?
Click to expand...

Can you not pull it from FlightAware? Probably takes a subscription and that’s tough to do on FO pay I suspect.

ETA FR24 appears to show both Flight# and Tail# w/o a subscription.
 
TCABM said:
Can you not pull it from FlightAware? Probably takes a subscription and that’s tough to do on FO pay I suspect.

ETA FR24 appears to show both Flight# and Tail# w/o a subscription.
Click to expand...

We are thinking along the same lines. They don't allow screen scraping and have measures in place to prevent it. I added a click to translate using FR24 and got denied.
I am guessing "real" pilots are not logging their time in a separate logbook. It is monotonous.

And yes, new FO pay is humbling.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
They provide the data to us but It doesnt include the tail numbers.
I wrote a program to scrape it and generate a MFB formatted spreadsheet so I can do a direct push to MFB but translating a flight number into a tail number is problematic.
OpenSky provides a free API but it has a window of only a couple hours where it will do the translation. So I have to manually go back to MFB and add the plane for my auto logger to work.
The placeholder tail number will solve this problem but I don't know if at some point I will have to explain why I flew the same plane around for 5000 hours. Do airline guys just rely on the company logs for the commercial stuff and log their GA seperately?
Click to expand...
Nerd!
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
They provide the data to us but It doesnt include the tail numbers.
I wrote a program to scrape it and generate a MFB formatted spreadsheet so I can do a direct push to MFB but translating a flight number into a tail number is problematic.
OpenSky provides a free API but it has a window of only a couple hours where it will do the translation. So I have to manually go back to MFB and add the plane for my auto logger to work.
The placeholder tail number will solve this problem but I don't know if at some point I will have to explain why I flew the same plane around for 5000 hours. Do airline guys just rely on the company logs for the commercial stuff and log their GA seperately?
Click to expand...
myflightbook has an api you could use to bulk add aircraft to your account. @EricBe might create a tool for you, if you ask nicely.
 

§ 61.51 Pilot logbooks.​

(b) Logbook entries. For the purposes of meeting the requirements of paragraph (a) of this section, each person must enter the following information for each flight or lesson logged:​

(1) General—​
(iv) Type and identification of aircraft, full flight simulator, flight training device, or aviation training device, as appropriate.​


Yeah, maybe this is picking nits, but I'm of the opinion that you should never give someone else any rope to hang you with... Especially in air carrier operations.

Maybe you could put in an obvious non-tail tail number for your automation to work (such as "ENY175") and then go back and fix them later.
 
flyingcheesehead said:

§ 61.51 Pilot logbooks.​

​

(b) Logbook entries. For the purposes of meeting the requirements of paragraph (a) of this section, each person must enter the following information for each flight or lesson logged:​


(1) General—​
​
(iv) Type and identification of aircraft, full flight simulator, flight training device, or aviation training device, as appropriate.​



Yeah, maybe this is picking nits, but I'm of the opinion that you should never give someone else any rope to hang you with... Especially in air carrier operations.

Maybe you could put in an obvious non-tail tail number for your automation to work (such as "ENY175") and then go back and fix them later.
Click to expand...
The other way to look at it is swamping them with detail could make it hard to find an issue ;)
 
flyingcheesehead said:

§ 61.51 Pilot logbooks.​

​

(b) Logbook entries. For the purposes of meeting the requirements of paragraph (a) of this section, each person must enter the following information for each flight or lesson logged:​


(1) General—​
​
(iv) Type and identification of aircraft, full flight simulator, flight training device, or aviation training device, as appropriate.​



Yeah, maybe this is picking nits, but I'm of the opinion that you should never give someone else any rope to hang you with... Especially in air carrier operations.

Maybe you could put in an obvious non-tail tail number for your automation to work (such as "ENY175") and then go back and fix them later.
Click to expand...

That rules out the easy button.
However building a database of legit tail numbers and routes they fly and selecting a random one from the general location...

See you have to think like a criminal. Not a diabolical one, just a nerdy misdemeanor type criminal.
 
I carried this around.I did leg by leg and tried to transfer it to my logbook at the end of each trip so I wouldn’t forget.. I wouldn’t fill out all the info in the mini log. Just stuff like tail number, flight time, night, instrument, instrument approach and anything unique that happened such as a mechanical, diversion, emergency, etc. I pretty much stopped logging unless something happened like mentioned above. Your airline should have a record of all your flying as well so you don’t need to worry too much if you miss logging some flights

crewoutfitters.com

8 leg Crew Log Book

Flight Crew Log Books
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I would think you could get print outs/pdf files from Endeavor and keep them in a separate binder. I believe that’s the way my airline son does it.
 
I gave up having a paper logbook pretty soon after I got a line as logging by hand became a huge time sink.

As far as the electronic logging, does myflightbook have a bulk import option? I made my own so I don't use mfb
 
dmspilot said:
I gave up having a paper logbook pretty soon after I got a line as logging by hand became a huge time sink.

As far as the electronic logging, does myflightbook have a bulk import option? I made my own so I don't use mfb
Click to expand...
It does but fails if I don't have a tail number.
 
Not an airline guy but I have some ideas.
1963321570518069248.jpg
 
I use Logbook Pro from NC Software.

It's not cheap, but allows me to import my upcoming trips with a copy/paste, from the company's scheduling website, then fill out the details for each flight on my phone, straight from the OOOI page, after block-in. Quick and easy to do and keeps the logbook up to date on a leg-by-leg basis.

Does Myflightbook not offer a similar feature?
 
Larry in TN said:
I use Logbook Pro from NC Software.

It's not cheap, but allows me to import my upcoming trips with a copy/paste, from the company's scheduling website, then fill out the details for each flight on my phone, straight from the OOOI page, after block-in. Quick and easy to do and keeps the logbook up to date on a leg-by-leg basis.

Does Myflightbook not offer a similar feature?
Click to expand...

MFB imports csv spreadsheets.
As far as I can tell, our records are only (I think) managed in an app on the iPad and the data is in a sort of cluttered format.
I very likely could be doing something wrong but when I open my employee flight log, it looks like the image below.
I email that PDF to my PC and manually go look up the tail number for each flight, and then parse out the actual vs SKD.
Its begging for clerical errors. I am in the process of writing an app to convert this to a csv file so MFB can import it to avoid mistakes and speed up the process.


1756929809045.png
 
In the not-121 14 CFRs, any time cruise is longer than 1 hr, I catch up on all paperwork. Is y'alls cruise long enough to catch up then? There's nothing worse than landing late back at base, cleaning the plane, then having to do 1 hour of paperwork before getting to go home - which is required as soon as I land on the last operation of the day.

SixPapaCharlie said:
MFB imports csv spreadsheets.
As far as I can tell, our records are only (I think) managed in an app on the iPad and the data is in a sort of cluttered format.
I very likely could be doing something wrong but when I open my employee flight log, it looks like the image below.
I email that PDF to my PC and manually go look up the tail number for each flight, and then parse out the actual vs SKD.
Its begging for clerical errors. I am in the process of writing an app to convert this to a csv file so MFB can import it to avoid mistakes and speed up the process.


View attachment 144738
Click to expand...
This is prime for RegEx (and you thought you left IT ;))
 
kaiser said:
In the not-121 14 CFRs, any time cruise is longer than 1 hr, I catch up on all paperwork. Is y'alls cruise long enough to catch up then? There's nothing worse than landing late back at base, cleaning the plane, then having to do 1 hour of paperwork before getting to go home - which is required as soon as I land on the last operation of the day.


This is prime for RegEx (and you thought you left IT ;))
Click to expand...


Our legs vary. Longest is ~3 hours but most are around an hour. Tends to be a few turns then a long haul to end the day.

And, Oh, I am still in IT. I have just about completed converting it, and bouncing it to the web to grab the tail number.
Next will be an API call to get it directly into MFB. Once this is done, I should be able to log a lengthy sequence in a few seconds where as now it is taking 45 minutes.

Sequence 01.gif
 
I thought you rich and handsome airline guys had a gentlemans gentleman follow you around to do such mundane chores such as feed you, dress you, bathe you and fill out your log books...:yesnod:
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I very likely could be doing something wrong but when I open my employee flight log, it looks like the image below.
Click to expand...
That is the old HI3 command in DECS on Sabre. Do they still give you a Sabre sign-in? Web access?

My point was that you need a way to pre-load your upcoming trip into an app on your phone so that all you have to do is enter the flight time, N-number, and conditions of flight to complete your logbook entry. Takes less than 30 seconds at the end of each flight. I do it right after the Parking Checklist. That's what Logbook Pro allows you to do.

This is what our trip looks like from our web interface. I copy/past into a page on the NC-Software site and it scrapes it to extract the flight data, including the other crewmember(s) name and employee number(s) (which I cut off from the image).

Screenshot 2025-09-03 170322.png

I then import the trip on my Logbook Pro mobile app and each leg is available with the known fields pre-filled.

1.png2.png

When I open Logbook Pro on my PC, I'll do a cloud sync and all of my completed entries are added to the logbook.

If your logbook software is marketed to airline pilots then it likely has a similar feature. That's what I'd be looking for.
 
TCABM said:
I think BrYan would prefer a csv file format though so it’s easily importable to MFB; don’t know if that is available from his employer or not.
Click to expand...
I would think that an ex-IT guy could extract the text from a pdf and create a csv file!

I can understand the appeal to just default to a single tail number to keep it simple, but personally, I would resist that urge. When I digitized my logbook a few years back, I did a lot of research to track down each tail number to get the exact types and serial numbers, mostly as a point of trivia. I think in some weird way it might be interesting in the future to look at statistics...did you ever fly THAT plane.... or did you fly one more than the others... or whatever.
But yeah, I can see that it also would be a burden to keep up with it too!
 
Weird your reports don't include the N number. Just write down or take a picture of it each flight?
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
MFB imports csv spreadsheets.
As far as I can tell, our records are only (I think) managed in an app on the iPad and the data is in a sort of cluttered format.
I very likely could be doing something wrong but when I open my employee flight log, it looks like the image below.
I email that PDF to my PC and manually go look up the tail number for each flight, and then parse out the actual vs SKD.
Its begging for clerical errors. I am in the process of writing an app to convert this to a csv file so MFB can import it to avoid mistakes and speed up the process.


View attachment 144738
Click to expand...
It looks like you can take the boy out of IT, but you can’t take the IT out of the boy….
 
I just log the generic type and all my jobs have been fine/expected that. I even combined days and even deltas scrutiny was fine with that. So something like IAH BTR IAH MCI 4.7 .5 imc 1.2 night e145.
If the FAA needs more details for some reason then my company has the records.
Now I just look at my totals every few months and log something like KATL, KJAN 270tt 30 imc 40 night 40 approaches .

Myflightbook allows you to use just default types then if you really need the tail just put it in remarks section.
Only time I put tail numbers is if something went wrong/funny.
 
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