135 & 121 Cross Country Time

blinkpilot182

blinkpilot182

Boeing Driver
Forgive me if there is already a thread about this, I'll bet their probably is. Two rather common questions...

1. What constitues cross country time for 135 requirements?
2. What constitues cross country time for 121 requirements?

Please post a Regulation, AC, or something official as a source.

Thanks!

-Jon
 
What he said. Here is how I teach it: Cliff's notes: an airport other than the departure counts as XC for 135

A landing more than 50NM from the point of departure is XC for the purpose of earning a rating. Except after obtaining a commercial, a flight over 50NM without a landing counts as XC for the purpose of earning aeronautical experience towards ATP (61.159). Think pipeline patrol & military pilots (carrier based or bombers than return to base after a mission). They'll fly several hours but make a landing back at the home base.
 
CFI A&P said:
What he said. Here is how I teach it: Cliff's notes: an airport other than the departure counts as XC for 135

A landing more than 50NM from the point of departure is XC for the purpose of earning a rating. Except after obtaining a commercial, a flight over 50NM without a landing counts as XC for the purpose of earning aeronautical experience towards ATP (61.159). Think pipeline patrol & military pilots (carrier based or bombers than return to base after a mission). They'll fly several hours but make a landing back at the home base.
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I'm not sure what you mean by the underlined. Seems to me to be correct without it.

I think Der_Meister makes it one step too complicated. Bottom line is that neither Part 135 nor Part 121 has a specific definition for what is considered a cross country flight, so all we're left with is the series of 61.1(b)(4) definitions. Since none of the list of exceptions applies, a cross country for Part 121 and 135 purposes is simply a

==============================
flight--
(A) Conducted by a person who holds a pilot certificate;
(B) Conducted in an aircraft;
(C) That includes a landing at a point other than the point of departure; and
(D) That involves the use of dead reckoning, pilotage, electronic navigation aids, radio aids, or other navigation systems to navigate to the landing point.
==============================
 
61.159 (a)(1) 500 hours of cross-country flight time.

61.1 (b)(4)(vi) states:

For the purpose of meeting the aeronautical experience requirements for an airline transport pilot certificate (except with a rotorcraft category rating), time acquired during a flight--
(A) Conducted in an appropriate aircraft;
(B) That is 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.
Look at 61.1 (b)(4)(vi)(B) – doesn’t mention landing. Yet 61.1 (b)(4)(ii) through 61.1 (b)(4)(v) does mention landing. For the purpose of cross country aeronautical experience towards the ATP, landings at an airport X distance away are not required. Landings at an airport of X distance away are required for the purposes of earning aeronautical experience towards commercial, see 61.1 (b)(4)(ii)(B)
In a nutshell, landings are another airport of a given distance are required to consider it cross country for the purpose of aeronautical experience towards the private, instrument, commercial airplane ratings. However, landings are not required for it to be considered cross country aeronautical experience for the ATP.

Does that help clarify my earlier statement?
 
CFI A&P: Correct. But where does it say you can't count that until "after obtaining a Commercial?" (the languiage in your post I underlined).

If you're a student pilot, start out on a cross country, get >50 nm out only to find that the destination runway closed down or the weather changed and turn back, while that flight will not count toward your private, instrument or commercial certificates and ratings, it will count toward an eventual ATP.
 
I guess that's possible, never thought of it that way. My personal experience, when I was earning aeronautical experience for those ratings I was set on landings at >50 because of the immediate need for that particular rating. Never thought of having three XC columns, one for Point to point, >50 w landing, and >50 w/o landing.
 
So a followup question on this. I'm a CFI with about 770 TT and 425 hours dual given. Filtering my logbook for only the dual given hours, I've got 32 hours of cross country time using the >50 NM no landing required. It looks like I will be at about 5500 TT when I reach 500 CC if I stick to only instructing to build experience. I instruct part 61 to people who fly for fun. Very few career type students.

Is this typical?

I'm going to have to find a way to build CC time more efficiently.
 
Raskolnikov said:
I'm going to have to find a way to build CC time more efficiently.
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If you instruct people who fly for fun, that's the perfect chance. Ask them if they want to do some maneuvers on the way to grab a $100 hamburger. They'll love it. GET YOUR CFII! Then, build your instrument training flights to land somewhere >50 NM away. It gives the students a more realistic exposure to the IFR system, and a chance to properly set up the approach. (Don't get me wrong, local flights where you do one approach after another in quick succession are needed as well, but a lot of realism is lost, and the student tends to fall behind the frenetic pace.)
 
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