Does this meet the long XC requirement for IR?

Rykymus

Rykymus

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Rykymus
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Getting a lot of different answers from CFIIs. Mine wanted to do a straight 260nm haul, then stop halfway on the way back for a 2nd landing and 3rd at home airport. Seems excessively long to me. I was going to suggest KTCY>KMRY>KHAF>KSTS>KTCY, with a different approach at each. Each leg is greater than 50nm straight line distance, and that would be 4 different approaches. They would also all be airports that I would likely be flying to in IMC on occasion. And, if we go early morning, the first three would probably be IMC on arrival. (So, some approaches in actual.)

From what I'm reading in the FARs, it seems like my route would suffice.

What say ye?
 
  1. In an airplane with an instructor -- Check
  2. Done under IFR -- Check
  3. Flight plan filed with ATC -- Check
  4. At least 250 NM total -- Check
  5. Instrument approach at each airport -- Check
  6. At least 3 different types of instrument approaches -- Check
Looks good to me
 
Since @Gucci Pilot answered the question perfectly, I get to ask:

I'm really curious about the "lot of different answers from CFIIs." Regulatory or practical reasons.

And, just to be technical, what's this "Each leg is greater than 50nm straight line distance" stuff?
 
midlifeflyer said:
Since @Gucci Pilot answered the question perfectly, I get to ask:

I'm really curious about the "lot of different answers from CFIIs." Regulatory or practical reasons.

And, just to be technical, what's this "Each leg is greater than 50nm straight line distance" stuff?
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My guess is he is applying the XC rule. I am building XC time now for my IR and a flight has to be over 50nm straight line to qualify, no? As far as the 250nm long XC, do the legs not have to be 50nm apart? I don't know, I'm asking.
 
Mike Smith said:
My guess is he is applying the XC rule. I am building XC time now for my IR and a flight has to be over 50nm straight line to qualify, no? As far as the 250nm long XC, do the legs not have to be 50nm apart? I don't know, I'm asking.
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In the definitions section of Part 61:

Cross-country time means—

(ii) For the purpose of meeting the aeronautical experience requirements (except for a rotorcraft category rating), for a private pilot certificate (except for a powered parachute category rating), a commercial pilot certificate, or an instrument rating, or for the purpose of exercising recreational pilot privileges (except in a rotorcraft) under §61.101 (c), time acquired during a flight—

(A) Conducted in an appropriate aircraft;
(B) That includes a point of landing that was at least a straight-line distance of more than 50 nautical miles from the original point of departure; and
(C) That involves the use of dead reckoning, pilotage, electronic navigation aids, radio aids, or other navigation systems to navigate to the landing point.


So not every leg has to be 50 miles long. As long as you can look at your route, and draw a straight line from your original departure, to one of the airports you plan on landing at, and it is at least 50 miles long, you are good. The rest of the airports can be within (insert any milage amount) of each other. For the long instrument cross country, all the leg miles need to add up to 250.
 
Mike Smith said:
My guess is he is applying the XC rule. I am building XC time now for my IR and a flight has to be over 50nm straight line to qualify, no? As far as the 250nm long XC, do the legs not have to be 50nm apart? I don't know, I'm asking.
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@Gucci Pilot answered it again. There only has to be one point of landing that is more than 50 NM from the original departure location. I think there are only two places there is a minimum =leg= requirement" the long solo cross country for the private (>50 NM in 61.109) and for the sport (>25 NM in 61.313), and the FAR is pretty specific about it:
and one segment of the flight consisting of a straight-line distance of more than [distance] nautical miles between the takeoff and landing locations; and​

For the rest, you can, if you want, do 10 airports, each within 5 NM of each other, so long as one of them is more than 50 NM from where you started.
 
He wants to help you out and get the commercial XC requirements met during instrument training. If you're going to be a commercial pilot I recommend to do it his way.
 
NJP_MAN said:
He wants to help you out and get the commercial XC requirements met during instrument training. If you're going to be a commercial pilot I recommend to do it his way.
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I thought of that as a possibility when I asked, but exactly which commercial cross country requirement would be met? The commercial dual cross countries - one day and one night - only require a landing more than 100 NM away.

Seems the OP's proposal would meet that one, maybe both if it were done part day and part night and the timing were planned right to have 2 hours of each..
 
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midlifeflyer said:
For the rest, you can, if you want, do 10 airports, each within 5 NM of each other, so long as one of them is more than 50 NM from where you started.
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I may be mistaken, but I thought I read an FAA letter indicating that as long as one leg is 50 nm, it doesn't matter if you don't get 50 nm away from your start. For example, you fly to a field 25 nm south, then to one 50 nm north, that's ok if you, provided you comply with the rest of the requirements.
 
Gucci Pilot said:
For the long instrument cross country, all the leg miles need to add up to 250.
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Not exactly. For the sake of thoroughness, 61.65 requires the flight be "(A) A flight of 250 nautical miles along airways or by directed routing from an air traffic control facility;"

So airway routing (or even vectors I suppose) that add to that distance can be counted. I recently had a situation where exactly this happened. Due to the equipment on the trainee's airplane and certain training objectives I wanted to meet, the airports I wanted to fly to fell just a few miles short of the 250nm straight-line distance. However, due to the airway routing, we covered more than 250nm. I made sure to document it as such in his logbook so there wouldn't be any questions (and there weren't).
 
midlifeflyer said:
Since @Gucci Pilot answered the question perfectly, I get to ask:

I'm really curious about the "lot of different answers from CFIIs." Regulatory or practical reasons.

And, just to be technical, what's this "Each leg is greater than 50nm straight line distance" stuff?
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It has to be 250 miles total. 5x50 = 250.

To the OP, from my own experience in this airspace, that isn't nearly as short a flight as you assume. Expect at least 20 minutes for each approach, plus the missed. You will be cruising high due to terrain. What you CAN do is fly outbound 125 miles and then back, with a stop along the way. Maybe to some place like Willows (KWLW) and get some broasted chicken and pie, and screw up your W&B, then a bit further to Chico (KCIC) to get the distance. Valley approaches are much shorter than coastal ones due to the altitudes involved.

KWLW has a VOR approach. KCIC has ILS. And KTCY has RNAV and VOR.

And FYI, if the wind is westerly, all your approaches except the last one are well aligned with prevailing traffic. If it's easterly, it's gonna suck. You'll have to double back 25 miles on each approach. And NorCal will NOT give you the STS ILS against traffic. I tried that on my IR XC, and had to taxi to Jet Center, park, and replan the rest of my XC so I could get an ILS or LOC (ended up going to Ukiah for the LOC, not originally planned).

Also note that it's commonly misunderstood, but you do not have to go to three different AIRPORTS on the XC. You must have three approaches, all of different types. Two can be at the same airport, but if you do that, it must be at least 125 miles away.
 
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Just did my long IFR XC. I had two longish legs of over 100 NM and one leg that was only about 35 NM. All direct the plan was 252 NM, as flown of flight aware tracking it was about 295 NM once I had finished. It was an interesting experience with several loops thrown at me. I got a real hold. The wind changed direction while I was in the hold so my ILS turned into an ISL with a circle to land the other direction. Plus ATC was dealing with an eminent presidential TFR, so got some random vectoring thrown into my flight with an amended route in flight. So it was a good experience.
 
PPC1052 said:
I may be mistaken, but I thought I read an FAA letter indicating that as long as one leg is 50 nm, it doesn't matter if you don't get 50 nm away from your start. For example, you fly to a field 25 nm south, then to one 50 nm north, that's ok if you, provided you comply with the rest of the requirements.
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I think you are mistaken. The language of the reg, quoted by @Gucci Pilot above, couldn't be clearer.

If I recall which FAA letter you are talking about. it deals with repositioning. So if a flight is
KAAA → KBBB (25 NM south of KAAA) → KCCC (51 NM north of KBBB & 26 NM of KAAA) → KAAA​
the pilot is permitted to consider KBBB the "original point of departure" and count KBBB → KCCC → KAAA as the cross country flight.
 
NJP_MAN said:
He wants to help you out and get the commercial XC requirements met during instrument training. If you're going to be a commercial pilot I recommend to do it his way.
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Not so much.

That's a VFR X/C for CPL.

Ofcourse if you need the time/XC time anyways, why not, longer is better, best to not always strive for just a passing grade, however in this instance I can also understand wanting to save $$ if you don't need the extra XC/TT/hood time
 
midlifeflyer said:
I think you are mistaken. The language of the reg, quoted by @Gucci Pilot above, couldn't be clearer.

If I recall which FAA letter you are talking about. it deals with repositioning. So if a flight is
KAAA → KBBB (25 NM south of KAAA) → KCCC (51 NM north of KBBB & 26 NM of KAAA) → KAAA​
the pilot is permitted to consider KBBB the "original point of departure" and count KBBB → KCCC → KAAA as the cross country flight.
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yes, I think that is what I am recalling.
 
I'll never be flying to earn a living, but I do want to get the commercial rating someday, just for the extra training.

I think the various CFIIs I've spoken with are getting the different requirements for different ratings confused. I was sure it was 1 leg of 50nm, and total of 250nm with three different approaches. And I'm sticking with the straight-line distances just to ensure that it meets ALL requirements, no matter what.

I'm about halfway through my IR training, prepping for my written on Thursday. Then, I'm doing 3 flights per day (2 with instructor, and one with safety pilot) for 2 weeks, right up to my checkride on Oct 4. If I pass, then I'll finally be able to fly into Monterey early enough to pick up some donuts from Red's before they sell out!
 
Rykymus said:
And I'm sticking with the straight-line distances just to ensure that it meets ALL requirements, no matter what.
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There is some benefit to that, even if it's only for your own piece of mind.
 
The flight plan in the OP doesn't qualify because it isn't 250nm along airways or ATC vectors. If you take "by directed routing from an air traffic control facility" as including a filed direct route that ATC clears you for, then it would be fine, but I didn't want to have to interpret language in the FARs or dig around for someone who had, so I only counted airways toward my 250nm.

I ended up with a 228nm direct leg to an airport to make an ILS approach, then went missed and flew along airways for 233nm to make a VOR/DME with a circle to land and get fuel, then 79nm along another airway before turning toward the IAF for a GPS approach. After going missed there, we cancelled IFR and flew VFR through the mountains a bit, had lunch, and then headed home separately. I had a really awesome solo VFR flight of about 600nm to get home, although I should have landed three times instead of two and then it would qualify for the commercial solo cross-country as well. All told, I logged 11.2 hours that day, developed a lot of confidence in talking to en route, approach, and tower controllers far away from home, and gained faith in the abilities of the airplane and myself to get from point A to a really distant point B.

If you don't mind building the hours anyhow, my way is a lot of fun. You gain a lot more than checking off the box. But if you do just want to check off the box without an "excessively long" flight, that's probably the more popular way to go. Just make sure that you meet all the requirements so you don't have to do it twice. You must be under IFR on a filed flight plan with 250nm along airways or ATC vectors, you must make three different types of instrument approaches with navigation equipment (which seems to me to exclude precision approach radar), and you must make an instrument approach at each airport. And because it is referred to in the regulations as a cross-country flight and it is toward your instrument rating, one point of landing must be a 50nm straight line distance from your point of origin. The length of each leg and the total length of the flight don't matter. So you could fly 125nm one way via airways, make two approaches, come back along the same airways, make one more approach, and call it good.

By the way, the commercial rating requires three cross-country flights. One must be solo or PIC with only a sleeping CFI as a passenger, 300nm total distance, landings at 3 points, and one point of landing 250nm from point of origin. The other two must be "training" which I interpret to mean with an instructor giving you instruction (mutually exclusive with the solo one, which allows a CFI to be on board but doesn't really call for training. Those are both 2-hour flights a distance of at least 100nm from the point of origin, one during the day and one at night. You could knock out one of those two at the same time as the instrument cross-country.
 
iamtheari said:
The flight plan in the OP doesn't qualify because it isn't 250nm along airways or ATC vectors. If you take "by directed routing from an air traffic control facility" as including a filed direct route that ATC clears you for, then it would be fine, but I didn't want to have to interpret language in the FARs or dig around for someone who had, so I only counted airways toward my 250nm.
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:dunno: I'm definitely confused.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but it sounds like you are saying it doesn't qualify because he's using straight line distances rather than airway routing.

Can you give us an example of a situation in which routing from Point A to Point B via airways would be less than the straight line distance?

I thought the shortest distance beteeen two points was a straight line and anything other than that would be longer (great circle computations aside). But maybe there's some newfangled physics or mathematics I don't know that changed all that.
 
What I'm referring to is that 61.65(d)(2)(ii)(A) says nothing about total flight length, but rather "A flight of 250 nautical miles along airways or by directed routing from an air traffic control facility." So you can fly LAX direct to JFK and back and not meet this requirement if "by directed routing from an air traffic control facility" does not include filing and flying a GPS direct flight plan. I opted to plan and fly airways for at least 250nm so I wouldn't have to worry about that.
 
iamtheari said:
What I'm referring to is that 61.65(d)(2)(ii)(A) says nothing about total flight length, but rather "A flight of 250 nautical miles along airways or by directed routing from an air traffic control facility." So you can fly LAX direct to JFK and back and not meet this requirement if "by directed routing from an air traffic control facility" does not include filing and flying a GPS direct flight plan. I opted to plan and fly airways for at least 250nm so I wouldn't have to worry about that.
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I can't imagine why it wouldn't. The flight is on an IFR flight plan in controlled airspace. Seems to me that any route I am cleared for by ATC, including LAX-JFK direct, is "directed routing from an air traffic control facility."

Are you saying if, on a flight where you filed airways, immediately after departure, ATC offers you direct to your first destination, you have to say "unable" or the flight won't count?

I think maybe you are seeeing a greater level of complexity to the language of the requirement than I am. Ah well. As they say, YMMV. :)
 
midlifeflyer said:
I think maybe you are seeeing a greater level of complexity to the language of the requirement than I am.
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Perhaps. Like I said, I opted to read the regulations in the most conservative manner and then apply them in the simplest manner, because it eliminated any room for interpretation. I've searched and haven't found any use of the quoted phrase anywhere on the Internet except for people quoting the FAR to tell you what the requirements are to get the rating. Nobody but I has been crazy enough to parse this one.
 
iamtheari said:
Perhaps. Like I said, I opted to read the regulations in the most conservative manner and then apply them in the simplest manner, because it eliminated any room for interpretation. I've searched and haven't found any use of the quoted phrase anywhere on the Internet except for people quoting the FAR to tell you what the requirements are to get the rating. Nobody but I has been crazy enough to parse this one.
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And you are, of course welcome to parse and interpret as you want. I only responded because of your assertion ,"The flight plan in the OP doesn't qualify," as though you knew some rule the rest of us didn't.

Besides, all the OP gave us was a series of airports in succession, not what specific plan he would file or route he expects to follow and I would suggest your conservative read might produce a non-qualifying flight. You choose your route and file a flight plan based on airways giving you 250 NM. Then, you receive "direct routing from an ATC facility" that is less. Unless you indeed reject the instructions, you will almost always end up with less than what you planned.

Choosing airports that give a combined straight line distance of 250 pretty much guaranties you will meet the requirement, no matter what you file or how you were cleared. Note the reg says "a flight" of 250 NM", not "a flight you planned to be 250 NM, but ends up being less" which is probably why I think it's the most common way of doing it.
 
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midlifeflyer said:
And you are, of course welcome to parse and interpret as conservatively as you want. I only responded because of your assertion ,"The flight plan in the OP doesn't qualify," as though you knew some rule the rest of us didn't.
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I probably spoke too assuredly on that point, but without FAA guidance that the more lenient of two possible interpretations is the correct one my plan was to apply the stricter of the two and avoid any doubt. I have heard of flight students having to re-do cross-country training flights because their CFIs read a requirement too loosely. Not necessarily for this one, but why risk having an argument with a DPE over it? It seems that the FAA has not given any guidance on what this language means. Calling the DPE you'll be taking the practical test with is probably a better idea than relying on advice from the Internet. If he says your plan is good, then go for it.

Edit to add: The main reason I push for the conservative reading is that the liberal reading of this language makes it mean the same as "at least 250 nautical miles total distance," which is exactly the language they use when that's what they mean, as in the commercial pilot requirements at 61.109(a)(2)(i). By using different words here, they presumably meant something different.
 
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Rykymus said:
I think the various CFIIs I've spoken with are getting the different requirements for different ratings confused.
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As a person working on the CFI because I want to teach, this irks me to no end. It's really easy to build yourself a cheat sheet and simply refer to the regs for each and teach the student to look it up with you instead of relying on faulty memory. Even if it's remote during a phone call.

Heck, nowadays you can have this stuff "canned" in an email folder and simply pop it open, read it, show the student how to find it themselves, and hit "forward" and send the student a copy.

You know what my 40,000 hour CFI did when I asked "Can we make a list of stuff we need for this?" for the Commercial... Pointed to his bookshelf and said, "Let's look it up and you make the list. Where do you suppose you'd look first?"

This process is as much about teaching how to find the answers as it is about giving the right ones.

I don't get the whole "CFIs guessing" thing. It's not like this is a technique or something not published in a common place.
 
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