I’ve have looked online, but could not find, a standard for electronic logbooks. Does EASA publish one? (Say an XML schema, or other file format specification, not just a list of the required data)
derek wrote:
I’ve have looked online, but could not find, a standard for electronic logbooks. Does EASA publish one? (Say an XML schema, or other file format specification, not just a list of the required data)
It looks like this does not exist, EASA is not that far down the digitalization road.
Alpha_Floor wrote:
Technology is only making the tampering easier, but it has definitely not eliminated the possibility! If sticking to paper, one could buy a new logbook and copy all entries over, making all the tampering he wanted.
I don’t agree. A digital logbook (not homemade Excel) can track any changes, so any suspicious editing can be captured. Creating a new account and copying all data in it would also be caught as there are timestamps when the entries were made. And the authorities (e.g. EASA) only have to certify the software once for all pilots (to make sure tracking and calculations are correct), not every Excel by itself. Additionally a pilot’s logbook can be automatically compared against the airplane’s (also digital) logbook which is compared with the (digital) maintenance records, which then makes it really difficult to tamper any evidence of the flying hours the pilot has. If all parties work together, it would become quite easy to record the time and quite difficult to hide anything.
Vladimir wrote:
Additionally a pilot’s logbook can be automatically compared against the airplane’s (also digital) logbook which is compared with the (digital) maintenance records
Correct me if I’m wrong but all those records hold different times:
pilot logbook: block time
airframe logbook: airborne time
engine logbook: tach time
All those differ. So other than establishing whether a flight actually took place or not, not much else can be proved by cross-checking records.
Alpha_Floor wrote:
Correct me if I’m wrong but all those records hold different times:
Not really. In the club I fly we have a digital airplane’s logbook which requires all times (block + flight + tach time) plus most of the additional data like pilot’s name, function, instructor (if any), landings, route, etc. So the airplane’s logbook has almost all data and then sends it to the other systems (maintenance, invoicing and even pilot’s logbook). What still does not happen is the comparison of these systems by the authorities, i.e. they do not compare pilot vs airplane vs maintenance records (although they have officially certified all of these systems). They could if they wanted to, but authorities are slow and will probably need another 10-20 years to get to that point, but the technology is here.
gallois wrote:
Whatever happened to trust?
Criminals have long found that anything can be fiddled, so if you don’t have trust what do you have?
Amen!
chflyer wrote:
This is one of the big advantages of the FAA licence for Part 91 flight. Time is only relevant when a new licence or rating is desired. Regular renewals such as flight reviews or proficiency checks don’t have any flight hour requirements.
And what exactly is the difference or even the advantage compared with EASA? For flight reviews and proficiency checks there is also no flight hour requirement at all in EASA.
The only difference is that in EASA you have the additional option to renew a SEP-rating without a flight review or a proficiency check at all if you can demonstrate certain flight hours (and a training flight). I would not call it an “advantage” if we did not have this option.
Airborne_Again wrote:
You are only required to make it available “without undue delay” upon request (FCL.045). This is not even an AMC but hard law.
Hard law using soft words is kind of a double edged sword. Nobody in whole Europe can tell you positively which delay is “undue” and which not.
A Swedish official might be ok with you bringing the docs next time you are around anyways while a German one could regard it as “undue” if he had to stay in Office longer than 5pm (Friday 2pm) to wait for you bringing the log.
EASA likes vague regs. FUD works better because everybody runs around scared because they read something on a forum. Look at the journey log stuff for example. Nobody has ever reported anybody looking at this.
Identical threads on the topic of electronic logbooks merged.
Malibuflyer wrote:
And what exactly is the difference or even the advantage compared with EASA?
Nobody except me and the CFIs I’ve used for biennial flight reviews has ever looked at my logbook for any reason in almost twenty years and I am not required to log any flight except those needed for currency, which in my case is those flight reviews and three landings every 90 days for carrying passengers. Other than that, logbooks don’t exist officially for my purposes. Mine is just a personal record I keep for fun. Many very experienced pilots I know (with e.g. 10+ times more flight hrs than me) no longer keep a real logbook for every flight, they’re beyond proving anything to anybody and it’s unnecessary to do so.
It occurs to me that one could probably demonstrate currency with on-line Flightaware ADS-B data for recent flights, versus keeping a logbook that obviously anybody could make up and create by hand. Neither is flawless documentation, but I don’t think flawless is required by precedent. This would get rid of flight log record keeping entirely for many people subject to FAA regs, given that nothing is required for the plane.
@Silvaire, you ARE lucky! UK CAA insisted that I resend them the copy of my logbook, reason being that the day of the month and the month were unreadble due to poor copy. But! Examiner confirmed in a separate paper that he verified and the numbers were OK. And last, but not the least, that was in early 2020 and all the hours were for 2019 and I had to show that the hours were within 18 months of the application date! The year WAS readable…
