The single most important document in any pilot’s life is his or her logbook. Best pilot logbooks.
You can spend thousands of hours doing amazing things while flying all over the world, but if it isn’t properly documented in your logbook, none of it counts.
The FAA requires you to have specific amounts of certain types of flight hours for each of your pilot ratings. Later in life, your ability to get your next great pilot job will depend on how many hours you have logged. Your ability to get insurance and your insurance rates (for personal or professional use) also depend on what’s in your logbook.
We’re going to discuss some of the key things that have to happen with your logbook, and recommend a few options.
Contents
Using Your Logbook
The first thing you’ll use your logbook for is to keep a record of your ground training. If you attend a formal ground school course, your instructor should log each session in your logbook. If you accomplish a self-study course, your Flight Instructor needs to put a statement in your logbook saying he or she has verified the effectiveness of your efforts.
The fun part of a logbook is logging each flight that you take. The FAA specifies the minimum items that must be logged for any flight in 14 CFR 61.51. You’ll record information about the aircraft you flew, where you flew, whom you were with, and the number of hours you flew.
When you’re receiving flight training, your Flight Instructor must endorse (sign) each logbook entry. You aren’t required to sign individual entries for flights you complete without an instructor; however, you are required to sign the bottom of each page of your logbook. Once you do this, it becomes a legal document.
Your logbook will also have space at the back for Flight Instructors to give you other types of endorsements. This will include your permission to fly solo as a student, his or her recommendation for you to take a checkride, and special flying skills like tailwheel aircraft or flying at high altitudes. Many of these endorsements are one-in-a-lifetime kinds of things and need to be kept safe.
Paper vs Electronic Logbooks
Traditionally, logbooks were hardback booklets filled out by hand. While you can still buy paper logbooks like this one, we recommend you consider using an electronic logbook app instead.
Paper logbooks are notorious for being lost, stolen, or destroyed. Electronic logbooks are stored in the cloud and can be backed-up on your own computer. They also make it easier to sort and analyze your data when filling out job or insurance applications.
LogTen Pro
There are at least a dozen good eLogbook apps on the market. However, our favorite is LogTen Pro from Coradine Aviation Solutions.
LogTen Pro has a beautiful user interface and lots of useful functionality. It only works on Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, and Mac computers), but you probably use one of those for your Electronic Flight Bag anyway. LogTen Pro has a free “Student” subscription for pilots with fewer than 250 hours, and is reasonably priced thereafter.
As with all eLogbooks, you can download your data to your own computer as a backup. If you want to switch to a different app, you can just upload your data file to the new service and you’ll be just fine.
ForeFlight
Another good Apple-only eLogbook option is ForeFlight. You’re probably using this app as your Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) anyway. ForeFlight’s logbook function is part of its main app, so you don’t have to pay any extra for it.
ForeFlight is constantly working to add features to its eLogbook. The nice thing about using ForeFlight is that it automatically generates logbook entries of your flight. You can use the app to send an entry to your Flight Instructor to edit and sign (LogTen Pro also has Instructor Signature and entry sharing). Like the rest of the app, it has an excellent user interface. This is a great solution for a lot of pilots, but as we said before, Logbooks are insanely important. Don’t just use ForeFlight’s because you’re using it as an EFB. Currently, their Logbook is a sub-feature, not the primary focus.
ZuluLog
If you’re a diehard Android user, you may want access to your eLogbook on your phone. Sadly, neither LogTen Pro or ForeFlight are any good for you in that case. Although there are several eLogbook apps that also work on Android, our favorite is ZuluLog.
ZuluLog’s interface isn’t as fancy as its Apple-only competitors, but it has plenty of useful features for analyzing and summarizing your flight time.
MilKEEP
For current or past military aviators, MilKEEP will save you hundreds of wasted hours for a shockingly low price.
MilKEEP is an eLogbook service for all branches of the US military. If you send them scans of your past flight records, they will use optical character recognition (OCR) technology to digitize your entire record in one fell swoop. They quality check their work, then give you the chance to do the same. This time-saving miracle only costs $200.
If all you wanted was a one-time flight records digitization, then look no further! After it’s done, you can take your data to LogTen Pro, ForeFlight, or any other eLogbook app and MilKEEP will be happy to have helped. For active military aviators, MilKEEP also offers a subscription-based service where you can send pictures (or PDFs) of your flight records monthly and they’ll add it to your logbook for you. They also allow you to manually add entries like any other eLogbook.
MilKEEP is a passion project created by an Air Force C-17 pilot and his wife. If you’re currently in the military or transitioning, you will not find a better value!
Final Thoughts
Like we stated in the beginning, we highly recommend an electronic logbook. Our top choice in LogTen Pro by Coradine Aviation. It is reasonably priced and has the absolute most functionality on the market. If you are a ForeFlight user you can’t beat the convenience of also using their logbook feature, but it’s not nearly as robust. If you refuse to use Apple products, then Zulu Log is probably your best option. Finally, MilKEEP is hard to beat for military pilots.
Best pilot logbooks. Best pilot logbooks. Best pilot logbooks.