Cross Country for Instrument Rating

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pilotrs

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PilotRS
I had a question regarding building cross country hours. I know I must do a landing 50nm away. But can anyone tell me if the following scenario will count as a cross country towards the instrument rating.

The destination airport is 55nm away. Due to class bravo restrictions, one possible route is 66.5 NM, and another route is 85nm. If I take the 66.5 nm route to go there and then take the 85 nm route (to get additional sightseeing) to come back, will that entire flight count as a cross country. I'm just wondering if the examiner will question why it took too long to go to an airport that is only 55nm and that you should've taken the 66.5 nm route to come back as well. Just wondering on what others have to say.

Thank You
 
If you are out building hours, nothing says you have to do it fast. Pull the power back to economy cruise settings and save some gas.
 
You can land at that airport 55nm away, put in ferry tanks and fly around in circles for 20 hours on the way back and still log it all as cross country.

Or, if you're working on your instrument, grab your CFII, fly there under the hood, shoot an approach, LAND, and then shoot an approach at every airport in between on the way back. Heck, you can shoot approaches all the way there too if you want, just be sure you have a landing at least 50nm away.

And no, no examiner is going to question that. They know the rules, and they know the rules are weird sometimes!
 
pilotrs said:
...I'm just wondering if the examiner will question why it took too long to go to an airport that is only 55nm and that you should've taken the 66.5 nm route to come back as well...
Click to expand...
My DPE didn't even look at my individual entries, just at the recent tallies. Although, I had over 300 cross country hours at the time, so maybe he figured I was enough over the necessary hours as to not bother...
 
I put tabs on all my relavent training entires in my log book. I think the examiner looked for one requirement then said I was good.
 
"Straight-line distances" are all that matters to the FAA when it comes to the definitions of these things.
 
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