Lost Logbooks - Flight Requirements?

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AA5Bman

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He who ironically no longer flies an AA5B
The other soaring thread made me think about how much I'd like to get into soaring again. The trouble is that the sum total (about 30 hours) I have in gliders was almost 20 years ago, which is one thing.

The other thing is that for whatever reason, my glider instructor really wanted me to use a separate logbook for the glider hours. So I did, and somewhere the last 20 years of moves and relocations and life changes and babies and careers, that logbook has gone "poof".

My recollection from studying for the Commercial is that the license is still "valid", sort of, but that I will have to redo and log the flight requirements to qualify for the license. Is that basically accurate? Here's what I found for flight requirements:
  • Are at least 16 years of age; and - check, unfortunately.
  • Have logged at least 10 hours of flight time in a glider and that flight time must include at least 20 total glider flights, and - I would have to redo this, I assume
  • Have 2 hours of solo flight time in a glider, and - would have to redo this as well
  • Have passed the FAA written examination; and - would I have to do this again too?
  • Have passed the flight exam with a FAA Examiner. - would I have to do this again too?
Glider still shows up on my license so clearly at one point I passed the two exams, but I don't have any other record of passing the FAA Written or Flight Exam. Would I have to do both of those as well?
 
You can hop in a glider and fly legally right now. You just need currency to carry passengers (and most likely some significant refresher from an instructor, but there’s no legal requirement for that.)
 
Iacra should suffice for most of what you need if not all.
 
MauleSkinner said:
What would he need from IACRA?
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It would have the hours he put in the last time he took a checkride. What more would he need, not that he even needs that, which maybe is your point?
 
Salty said:
It would have the hours he put in the last time he took a checkride. What more would he need, not that he even needs that, which maybe is your point?
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His certificate says he’s qualified to act as PIC in gliders. The only additional information he could get called out on is the proper launch endorsement(s), which don’t show up in IACRA, but if the instructor who checks him out really needs to see those in print, the instructor can provide them at the completion of the successful checkout.
 
AA5Bman said:
  • Are at least 16 years of age; and - check, unfortunately.
  • Have logged at least 10 hours of flight time in a glider and that flight time must include at least 20 total glider flights, and - I would have to redo this, I assume
  • Have 2 hours of solo flight time in a glider, and - would have to redo this as well
  • Have passed the FAA written examination; and - would I have to do this again too?
  • Have passed the flight exam with a FAA Examiner. - would I have to do this again too?
Glider still shows up on my license so clearly at one point I passed the two exams, but I don't have any other record of passing the FAA Written or Flight Exam. Would I have to do both of those as well?
Click to expand...
No need to redo any of it as far as the FAA goes. Once you have the cert, you have the cert. You could pass your checkride on Monday, burn your logbook on Tuesday and go fly on Wednesday with nothing more than your temp airman cert if your pocket. If you want to carry a passenger on Wednesday, you'd have to buy a new logbook and then fly and log the required takeoffs and landings first but other than that, you'd be good to go.
 
Lost Logbook in general- Is there any kind of repository for CFI flight instruction or their logbooks? What do old timers, or their estate, do with their records generally?
Example- You lost your LB, could you find the original CFI's LB or their widow etc., and recreate yours from theirs?
 
Thanks for the answers everyone. I was really thinking I’d have to log the required flight times for the cert - I was so sure I remember something about that from my commercial (which I obviously never got around to finishing, lol).

That said, maybe what I *am* remembering is that you definitely have to have logged the hours required for currency purposes, so in this case, I would just be considered not current, just as if I hadn’t logged 3 night takeoffs and landings in order to fly with passengers at night.
 
You have to log time to qualify for checkrides. Once you have what ever certifications you're going to want, you then only need to log enough flights to satisfy currency as far as the FAA is concerned. Now most pilots continue to log every minute of every flight and there are lots of good reasons for that, but keeping legal in the eyes of the FAA isn't one of them.

When I was flying professionally, I worked with guys who had no idea how many hours they actually had because years before that, they'd stopped logging anything other than minimum for currency. They weren't interested in pursuing any additional certificates, they had more than enough hours to make their insurance as cheap as it was ever going to be, and they no longer cared about keeping track of it for sentimental reasons so why bother? I was pretty burned out myself by then so I couldn't really blame them and I ended up doing the same thing myself for quite a while.
 
Well... now I’m back to thinking the flight requirements for a certificate may need to be logged:

Aeronautical training and experience that is used by airmen to meet the requirements for a certificate or rating, or for recent flight experience, must be documented in a reliable record.

As far as I can tell, that’s not differentiating between hours used to qualify before the Checkride or hours to substantiate the flight requirements afterwards. It does seem to suggest that a pilot can recreate their logs a number of ways, none of which happen to be applicable to me except for writing to request whatever the FAA has.

@MauleSkinner when you say it only matters if I have to show the time, do you mean for another rating or a job, or to be legal in the event of, for instance, a ramp check?
 
AA5Bman said:
Well... now I’m back to thinking the flight requirements for a certificate may need to be logged:

Aeronautical training and experience that is used by airmen to meet the requirements for a certificate or rating, or for recent flight experience, must be documented in a reliable record.

As far as I can tell, that’s not differentiating between hours used to qualify before the Checkride or hours to substantiate the flight requirements afterwards. It does seem to suggest that a pilot can recreate their logs a number of ways, none of which happen to be applicable to me except for writing to request whatever the FAA has.

@MauleSkinner when you say it only matters if I have to show the time, do you mean for another rating or a job, or to be legal in the event of, for instance, a ramp check?
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I was referring specifically to your situation, in which you’re already rated to fly gliders, so there’s no 8710 for a rating or checkride that would be required to get back into flying gliders.

You may have to show currency for a ramp check or investigation, although in your case the lost logbooks wouldn’t show either of those anyway; and there is no legal requirement to have those logbooks for a job application/interview.
 
As others have said, you already have the certificate, you have already met the requirements for a certificate or rating, that's all the proof you need, already vetted by the examiner before your checkride.
Note that the above FAA link mentions obtaining copies of your previous 8710s, so that form can be used as proof of those hour totals. in your case, say, all the glider time totals you had when you applied for the certificate (though, again, not strictly needed). I'd get that 8710, and use it as the starting point totals for your 'new' glider log (or to fill in the appropriate columns of your one logbook, whichever you choose).
 
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