Are electronic pilot logbooks legal in Canada?

Every licence I hold was issued on the strength of a paper logbook. Private, commercial, airline transport: each application meant submitting the book to Transport Canada for validation. I didn’t switch to a digital log until after the last of them.

Since then I’ve kept my log digitally, first in a desktop app and then in a spreadsheet I built myself, and I’ve taken it to airline interviews. So I’ve kept a logbook both ways, and I’ve had both read. Here’s what the rules say about the question most pilots ask before they switch: is an electronic logbook actually allowed?

Is an electronic logbook legal in Canada?

Yes. The rule that requires a pilot logbook in Canada says who has to keep one and what each entry has to contain: the date, the aircraft type and registration, your crew position, day or night and VFR or IFR, where you departed and landed, and the flight time, with a few extras for gliders and balloons (CAR 401.08). What counts as each crew position, and as night, cross-country or instrument time, is covered in Logging flight time in Canada.

It doesn’t say what the log is made of. There’s no mention of paper, ink, a printed book or a particular layout. A digital log is held to the same list of contents as a paper one, no more and no less.

Does Transport Canada accept an e-logbook with a licence application?

Yes, and it says so in its own words. Its licence application instructions tell applicants: “You can email your e-logbook or a scanned copy of your paper logbook” (TC licence application page).

What doesn’t change is what the log is for at that moment. Transport Canada’s application guidance says your log “should provide clear evidence of flight hours flown” (AC 401-002). An e-logbook is read the same way a paper one is: every total you claim has to trace back to entries that add up. A digital log makes the adding up easier. It doesn’t make the entries any less your responsibility.

Does a logbook app need Transport Canada’s approval?

No. The regulation (CAR 401.08) and the personal-log section of the licensing standard (Standard 421.08) set out what a log must contain and what happens if it’s lost. Neither sets up any approval process for logbooks, paper or electronic. You’ll see apps and printed books sold with Transport Canada’s name on them. That tells you what the layout was designed around. It isn’t an approval, because the rules have no way to grant one.

What’s worth checking instead, before you commit years of flying to one:

• It records everything CAR 401.08(2) lists, for every flight.
• It prints. Sooner or later someone will want pages, not a screen.
• You can get all of your data out, in a format another program can read. I’ve left a logbook app before. Plan on outliving yours.

Who can write in a digital logbook?

The same people who can write in a paper one: you, or someone you’ve authorised (CAR 401.08).

That part is simple. The hard part is the history that’s already signed. My paper logbooks carry validation stamps from employers, signed against the hours I flew for them. When I moved to a desktop app, those stamps couldn’t come with me. A stamp is ink on a page, and a row typed into an app isn’t the same evidence. So my paper books stayed the record for those years, and I still keep them.

Digital logbooks handle signatures in different ways. Some let an instructor or supervisor draw a signature on the screen. Neither CAR 401.08 nor the personal-log section of Standard 421 says how an authorised entry has to be signed. Whatever your app does, keep the originals of anything that was signed on paper.

Standard 421 does use the word “certify”. Its section on lost logs refers to attempts to “reproduce and certify entries” (Standard 421.08), without saying what certifying involves. Printed logbooks commonly give you a line at the foot of each page to sign that the entries are true. Nobody has asked me for my log in years, now that I’m settled at a career airline. But if a prospective employer or Transport Canada did, I’d print it and be ready to verify those pages.

Do you have to carry your logbook?

Not under the rule that lists what you must be able to produce when you fly. It names your permit, licence or rating and your medical certificate (CAR 401.03). It doesn’t name your personal log. Having your log on a phone or tablet is a convenience, not something that rule asks for.

What if your digital logbook is lost?

Then you’re in the same position as a pilot whose paper book burned. The fallback is a sworn declaration, and without corroborating evidence it won’t carry you past the experience a Commercial Pilot Licence requires (Standard 421.08). What the declaration has to contain is covered in what happens if you lose your pilot logbook.

A paper book can burn. A digital log can go with one dead laptop or one closed account. I’ve never lost mine, because it never lives in only one place. I keep local copies on different kinds of storage, plus a copy of the backup in the cloud. When one fails, the others don’t fail with it.

A digital log you haven’t backed up is less safe than the paper book it replaced.

Will an airline accept an electronic logbook?

In my interviews, yes: both paper and digital. At the first where I used a digital log, I produced it from my own spreadsheet. The interviewers remarked that it was unusual, and accepted it. I brought my paper logbooks too, as the historical record, in case they wanted to see the older entries and the validations in them.

Paper, digital, or both?

Both, if you’re switching partway through a career. Keep the paper books as the record for the years they cover, with their signatures intact. Keep the digital log for everything since. You don’t have to retype the old rows to make the digital totals complete, and the sooner you start, the less there is to bring across. I’ve made the case for starting early in Transport Canada pilot logbook requirements.