What airlines look for in a logbook

Last week I had the honor of being invited to a meeting between American Airlines' Pilot Hiring Team and providers of pilot services such as logbooks (myself, obviously), interview preparation, military to civilian conversion, etc.  We got an overview of their hiring philosophy, but (to my pleasure) spent most of the time discussing logbooks.  With their permission, I am summarizing here my key takeaways and how you can use MyFlightbook to put your best foot forward.  Obviously, this is one airline, but I'd be very surprised if the advice and guidelines here don't carry across to any other airline.

I'll quickly cover the high level items; none of these should be a surprise.  They want to see  that you:

• Are professional
• Communicate well
• Are detail oriented
• Produce everything that they request
• Provide consistent, accurate and transparent data (more on this below, since this speaks to logbooks)
• Have original documents (not copies) of your certificate, medical, passport, etc.
• Handle stress well
• Dress appropriately
• Overall show that you would be a good representative for the airline.

There are multiple touch points between an airline and an applicant before an interview, and they are paying attention to these attributes at every one of them.

OK, let's talk about your data.  I heard a few key themes.

The first is that they want to see that you adhere to proper logging standards, specifically 61.51.  Some of the common issues with this include:

• Missing tail numbers
• Logging sim time as total time.  If it's not in an actual aircraft, leave total time (and PIC and SIC) blank.  I've addressed this in the blog before, and I recommend using the Check Flights tool to help you find flights where you may have done this.  Yes, some sim time can contribute towards the required total flight time for some certificates, but that's a credit, not total time.  (I.e., if you need 1000 hours for something and the regs let you apply 50 hours of appropriate sim time towards that requirement, you don't get to log 50 of those appropriate sim time as total time.  What they're saying is that "the sum of your aircraft time plus MIN(50, appropriate sim time) must be at least 1000hours")
• Doing a single entry for all of the flights in a month or a week flights is not acceptable . However, aggregating multiple flights on a single day is fine as long as the city pairs and ship/N numbers are logged.  If you converted from paper logbooks to electronic, and have a few catch-up flights to make the totals continuous (as the starting totals tool will do for you), that's fine - but they want to see the original paper logbooks that are the source of those catch-up flights.
• Logging deadhead time as total time.  Or "Bunk time".  E.g., if you are in a multi-person crew on a 10 hour flight that typically requires 3 pilots, they want to see 6.7hours (not 10); on a 12 hour flight with 4 pilots, you should be logging 6 hours
• They didn't specifically mention these two 61.51 requirements, but I will because I see it all the time (and again, the Check Flights tool can help with this):
• If you log time in a sim, you are supposed to log the details of that sim session.  Things like the location, the serial # or registration of the sim, and so forth.  In MyFlightbook, whenever you choose a sim as an entry's aircraft, it will automatically show a "Simulator/Training Device Identifier" field to contain this information; the field auto-completes to previously used values for ease of data entry when re-using a sim.
• If you log approaches, you're supposed to log the details (type, location) of the approach.  Both the website and the iOS/Android apps have an "approach helper" (use the "+" button next to the approach count) that helps you to capture this data.

There was a bunch of discussion around military pilots, much of which I didn't follow (being a civilian pilot myself), but a few items that I did note:

• "Military Other Time" is often very vague and contains a lot of time that they don't count (for example, where you weren't actually the one manipulating the controls).  Best to use other more specific fields.
• Military sorties are typically logged wheels-up to wheels-down, and it's standard to add 0.3hrs when converting this to civilian time, but they find it helpful if this time is broken out.  I don't have a formal way to do this at the moment; one way to do it might be that if you have 100 military flights, put one more flight with 100 x 0.3 = 30 hours to denote the extra .3 hours and make it clear the function of that entry; or, perhaps this would be a good use of the "Military other time" - put 0.3 into that field for each such flight.
• Airlines fly airplanes, not helicopters, so they really want to focus on the airplanes.  MyFlightbook by default does break out category/class totals at the top, so helicopter time vs. MEL Airplane vs. SEL airplane make this pretty easy.
• Unmanned time doesn't count at all for the experience they're looking for; don't include it in your total time.
• If you use the ARTEMIS system, it produces an Excel spreadsheet.  Bring that as-is; don't personalize it.

Anyhow, I will put in a strong plug here again for using the Check Flights tool to ensure that you are following best practices in logging of your time; it has over 150 different checks, and will highlight all sorts of potential issues.

The second big theme I heard was around consistency, honesty and transparency.  If you busted a checkride, don't hide it.  Own it, be able to speak to what you learned from it.  They will find out, and if you tried to hide it, game over.  They've had candidates who filled out their application and said one number of hours, but the logbook showed a different number of hours.  They do allow a bit of slop in this (about 10% - which is more than I would have expected!) but the numbers do more or less need to tie.  If there is a significant gap, that raises all sorts of questions that you don't want to have to answer.

If you lose your logbook or it is stolen (a good argument for an electronic logbook!), you need something that counts as original.  Best to submit Form AC 8060-68 (Request for Copies of My Complete or Partial Airman File) to get a copy of the FAA's official records.

The third theme I heard was around presentation.  At American, at least, they get about 40 applicants a day and they have only 3-4 people reviewing logbooks, so the easier you can make it for them, the better.  I've given talks at OSH about this topic and have posted about it as well.  You do not need to get fancy for the sake of being fancy, but you do want to make their life as easy as possible.  Some additional tips for presentation:

• They want to be able to find checkrides and re-checks easily.  Use sticky tabs for this (if using paper), and/or flight coloring to make important flights like these stand out.
• They want to see your original paper logbooks, coffee stains and scratch-outs and all; don't try to make them what they aren't.  And even if you've transcribed them into MyFlightbook, if it was originally entered on paper, then the paper is the legal original and they want it.
• If it's paper, make sure every page is wet-ink signed.  You need to formally stand behind your data.  Note that in MyFlightbook, if you print to paper, you can print incrementally using the "Resume from last printout" option on the "What to include" tab of the printing page so that you only have to sign new pages as they are created.  MyFlightbook now also supports digital attestations of a PDF version of your logbook, which follows the guidance in AC-120-78B and thus should be acceptable to the airlines.
• It's a good idea to write up a cover page telling them where to look to find important data, particularly if your logbook is spread across multiple media.
• Bonus points for adding Turbine/SIC and Turbine/PIC times.  These are available as optional columns you can add to most of the print layouts.
• If you have questions, reach out with them. Don’t wait until you arrive for your interview to ask. 

The good news if you use MyFlightbook is that it has all sorts of tools to help ensure that you are logging correctly and displaying it appropriately. 

I found it very helpful to hear all of this from the source; I hope these tips are useful for you as well.