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Lost Pilot Logbook....How to Deal with it.

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cblink.007

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 7, 2014
Messages
1,330
Location
K2W6, Maryland, USA
After doing a quick search and coming up a little empty here, I elected to throw this one out there....

Last weekend after coming home from a flight, the Mrs and I were unable to locate our logbooks. After a brief thrashing of the home office, we found them...right where we always have them.

Given the brief 'scare', it leads to the most basic question:

"My logbook is gone! Now what?"

Now, from our chairs here, if our books were legitimately lost, there would not be much of a setback, as we maintain parallel spreadsheets that break our experience down to extreme detail; in my particular case, I started doing this back in 2008 as a "just in case". My employer also maintains a stand-alone log for company aircraft flights. I'm under the impression that this is all good in the eyes of the FAA.

But what if, say, your average Private Pilot certificate holder, is about to do a Commercial Pilot oral/practical, his house burned down to the ground, taking the logbook with it....and did not have any kind of backup documentation of anything, plastic certificates notwithstanding.

Would this be a matter of the pilot getting with his CFI and making entries based off of any known documentation (ie the CFI's logbook, etc), with an explanation annotated in the new logbook for the examiner?

I'm actually in the process of doing the CFI & CFII certificates, but have always wondered about what an appropriate answer to this question should be. I know the FAR's give us all but carte blanche on how we log flights & experience (as long as it is accurate and actually happened), but I personally know one DPE who will turn an applicant away at the slightest hint of a logbook irregularity. I'd know; he turned me away at my commercial pilot ride back in 2005....over a 0.3-hr logbook entry over ten years prior. (it was my first intro flight, and the CFI did not endorse the entry)

Let's say you all!

[OP NOTE: I prefer to hear only from those who either hold Instrument ratings on up, and or those who have actually been through this before]
 
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