FAA pilot logbook requirements (14 CFR 61.51)

In 2003 I set out to convert my Canadian ATPL into an FAA airline transport pilot certificate. The FAA verified my Canadian licences through a Flight Standards District Office, and I mailed my logbooks in. I wrote the FAA ATP knowledge test, then flew a checkride in a multi-engine aircraft under IFR in Richmond, Virginia. An administrative error at the training unit meant a second flight check in 2004. The FAA accepted the time in my Canadian logbooks and issued the certificate.

One entry from that conversion still bothers me. The instructor wrote his validation of my training in the Remarks column, in cramped handwriting. I’ve never been able to trace him, because his certificate number beside it can’t be read. That entry is why this article spends time on endorsements.

Do you have to log every flight?

No. Section 61.51(a) requires you to document and record the training and aeronautical experience you use to meet the requirements for a certificate, rating or flight review, and the experience you need for recent flight experience (14 CFR 61.51). The rest is optional. Section 61.51(c) states what logged time is for: applying for a certificate, rating or privilege, and meeting recent experience.

I log every flight anyway. Looking back over a career, a logbook reads as a memory log. Some flights stand out, and many took me through cultures and geographies most people don’t know exist. A thin log of just the necessities would have been a missed opportunity. There’s a practical reason too: a flight you didn’t log is a flight you can’t count later, when the next licence or the next application wants a total you didn’t need at the time.

What must each logbook entry contain?

For each flight or lesson you log to meet 61.51(a), the regulation lists three groups of information (14 CFR 61.51):

• General: the date; the total flight or lesson time; where the aircraft departed and arrived (for a lesson in a full flight simulator or flight training device, where the lesson took place); the type and identification of the aircraft or device; and the name of a safety pilot, if 14 CFR 91.109 requires one.
• Type of experience or training: solo, pilot in command, second in command, flight and ground training received from an authorized instructor, and training received in a simulator or training device from an authorized instructor.
• Conditions of flight: day or night, actual instrument, simulated instrument (in flight or in a device), and night vision goggles.

The regulation doesn’t prescribe a layout. It asks you to record the time “in a manner acceptable to the Administrator”.

What must a flight instructor’s endorsement include?

Training time has to be logged and endorsed by the authorized instructor “in a legible manner”. The entry must include a description of the training, the length of the lesson, and the instructor’s signature and certificate number, together with “certificate expiration date or recent experience end date, consistent with the requirements of § 61.197” (14 CFR 61.51).

The “or” is new. A rule effective 1 December 2024 removed the expiration date from flight instructor certificates and replaced renewal with recent experience: an instructor now keeps their privileges by meeting one of the requirements in 61.197 every 24 calendar months (89 FR 80050) (14 CFR 61.197). The FAA’s sample endorsements now show both forms (AC 61-65K):

• /s/ [date] J. J. Jones 987654321CFI RE 12-31-2026 for a certificate without an expiration date
• /s/ [date] J. J. Jones 987654321CFI Exp. 01-31-2025 for one with an expiration date

The same rule changes 61.51(h)(2)(ii) again on 1 March 2027. From that date, the endorsement carries the instructor’s signature, certificate number and “recent experience end date”, and the expiration date drops out (89 FR 80050). Until then, eCFR’s current text shows the 2024 wording, with only a link to the amendment above it.

Legibility hasn’t changed, and it’s the part that caught me out. An endorsement you can’t read is one you can’t trace. When an instructor signs your logbook:

• Check that you can read the certificate number before they leave. AC 61-65K says an instructor “may optionally include their printed name”, so ask them to print it beside the signature.
• Photograph the page. Paper gets damp, and ink fades.

What counts as solo, PIC and SIC time?

The rules are specific, and each one is narrower than it first looks (14 CFR 61.51):

• Solo is time as the sole occupant of the aircraft. With anyone else on board, an instructor included, it isn’t solo.
• A student pilot may log PIC only as sole occupant, with a solo endorsement under 61.87, while training for a certificate or rating.
• PIC can be logged as sole manipulator of the controls of an aircraft you’re rated for, as sole occupant, or while acting as PIC where more than one pilot is required. It can also be logged as an instructor while instructing, or as an ATP acting as PIC of an operation that requires an ATP.
• PIC under supervision counts as PIC only inside an approved PIC training program. The supervising pilot must certify the training in your logbook, with their signature and flight instructor certificate number. Canada treats it differently: there it is credited towards an ATPL in part, and PIC under supervision under the CARs has its own rules.
• SIC is time as a qualified crewmember in an aircraft, or an operation, that requires more than one pilot. An approved Part 135 SIC professional development program also qualifies.
• Public aircraft SIC is new since 2 December 2024: a pilot a government entity designates as SIC on a public aircraft operation may log it (89 FR 80310). Time logged this way can’t count towards a private or commercial certificate or an instrument rating.

Who logs PIC and SIC on a given flight, including first officers and safety pilots, is in How to log PIC time under FAA rules.

How do you log instrument approaches for currency?

You may log instrument time only while operating the aircraft “solely by reference to instruments”. Instrument currency under 61.57(c) asks for six approaches, holding, and intercepting and tracking courses in the preceding 6 calendar months (14 CFR 61.57). For that currency, 61.51(g)(3) requires you to record “the location and type of each instrument approach accomplished”, and the name of the safety pilot if one was required (14 CFR 61.51).

The paper logbooks I started in had a column for instrument time and one for the number of approaches. Early in my career I didn’t keep even that count, though for currency I should have. A count on its own doesn’t meet the rule; the location and type have to be written somewhere, in Remarks if your logbook has no column for them. If you fly an approach somewhere other than your destination, name that airport.

The FAA’s 2015 guidance on what makes an approach loggable adds conditions the regulation doesn’t spell out (InFO 15012):

• In an aircraft, you can’t log an approach for currency without also logging actual or simulated instrument time.
• You must be established on each required segment down to the MDA or DA/DH. Radar vectors to the final approach course stand in for the earlier segments.
• In actual conditions, the approach counts whether you break out and land or fly the missed approach.

In a simulator or training device, instrument time used towards a certificate or rating needs an authorized instructor present, who signs to verify it. For currency, your logbook or training record must name the device, the time and the content of the session (14 CFR 61.51).

Does time in a foreign-registered or government aircraft count?

Yes, within limits. Section 61.51(j) accepts flight time in four kinds of aircraft (14 CFR 61.51):

• a US-registered aircraft with a standard or special airworthiness certificate;
• a foreign-registered aircraft with an airworthiness certificate approved by the authority of an ICAO member state;
• a military aircraft under the direct operational control of the US Armed Forces;
• an aircraft used for a public aircraft operation. Before 2 December 2024, this was limited to official law enforcement flights (89 FR 80310).

The time in my Canadian logbooks was the time the FAA credited for my ATP. The same personal log holds my time in a US-registered King Air, flown in the Canadian Arctic, and later that one log, Canadian and US-registered time together, was accepted towards a Kenyan licence once the Kenyan exams and flight tests were done. One log served three authorities.

The route I took has changed since then. An ATP applicant on a foreign licence still has that licence verified through the foreign authority (AC 61-65K). But the knowledge test for an ATP with a multi-engine rating now needs a graduation certificate from an ATP certification training program first (14 CFR 61.156).

Who can ask to see your logbook?

Under 61.51(i), you must present your pilot certificate, medical certificate, logbook or any other record Part 61 requires, “upon a reasonable request”, to any of these (14 CFR 61.51):

• the FAA;
• an authorized representative of the NTSB;
• any federal, state or local law enforcement officer.

Some pilots must also carry the logbook in the aircraft:

• a student pilot on every solo cross-country;
• a sport pilot on every flight;
• a recreational pilot on the solo flights the rule lists (beyond 50 NM from where they trained, in airspace that requires talking to ATC, between sunset and sunrise, or in an aircraft they aren’t rated for);
• a flight instructor with a sport pilot rating while giving training.

For everyone else, 61.51 doesn’t require the logbook on board.

In my case, the only time the FAA looked at my logbooks was the licence conversion. I mailed them in, and I never learned what was checked or how. In my experience, a logbook meets the regulator with an application, not on a ramp.

Can an FAA logbook be electronic?

Yes. Section 61.51 sets no format, only “a manner acceptable to the Administrator” (14 CFR 61.51). The FAA’s advisory circular on electronic signatures and recordkeeping lists pilot logbooks in its scope. It treats an electronic signature as “functionally equivalent to a handwritten signature”. Under Part 61, using one “does not require formal FAA approval, acceptance, or authorization” (AC 120-78B).

The same advisory circular recommends that you follow its guidelines anyway, and says the FAA may question a signature or record that doesn’t. Its criteria for an electronic signature include that it is unique to the signer, and that there is a means to identify and authenticate the person who signed. Identifying the signer is exactly what that paper endorsement can no longer do.

So there’s no approval process for a logbook app under Part 61. Check instead that you can print or export every entry, with every endorsement, in a form an examiner can read.

If you hold a Canadian licence too, the same questions have Canadian answers: what a Canadian personal log must contain, and whether an electronic logbook is legal in Canada.