EASA logbook requirements, explained simply

What EASA FCL.050 actually asks you to record in your pilot logbook, and how to keep it right without thinking about it.

What the rule says

FCL.050 is short: a pilot shall keep a reliable record of the details of all flights flown. The detail lives in the guidance, which sets out the columns a logbook is expected to contain and the form they take.

In practice an inspector, examiner or airline wants to open your logbook and see, per flight, where you went, when, in what, in which seat, and how the time splits.

What every entry needs

Each flight carries the same set of details, whether it is a circuit or a long cross country flight.

  • Date of the flight
  • Departure and arrival aerodrome, as four letter ICAO codes, with off block and on block times
  • Aircraft type and registration
  • Total block time, in hours and minutes
  • Landings, split into day and night
  • Operational condition time: night and instrument (IFR) time
  • Function time: pilot in command, copilot, dual, or instructor
  • Simulator sessions recorded separately from aircraft time
  • Remarks and endorsements, including the instructor or examiner signature

The parts pilots get wrong

Three mistakes come up again and again. Decimal hours instead of hours and minutes: a 1.5 in the block column is ambiguous and a paper logbook never uses it. Function time adding up to more than block time, which cannot happen. And simulator hours quietly counted into aircraft totals, which inflates every figure downstream.

The fourth is page totals. A paper logbook carries totals forward from page to page, and an export that does not is not a substitute for one.

How caeloo handles it

Times are entered and stored in hours and minutes, aerodromes are validated as four character ICAO codes, function time can never exceed block time, simulator sessions are kept out of aircraft totals, and the PDF export is laid out like the official paper logbook with page totals carried between pages.

You log the flight; the compliance part is simply how the app works.