Commercial pilot license (CPL) hours milestones
Commercial is the certificate where careful logging pays off, because several requirements overlap and a sloppy entry can cost you a flight you already made.
What is tracked
- Total flight time
- Pilot-in-command time, including the cross-country and night portions
- Cross-country PIC time
- Instrument time
- Training in a complex, high performance or technically advanced aeroplane
- The long cross-country flights, day and night, with their distance and landing requirements
- Recent dual in preparation for the practical test
- Solo or performing-the-duties time, as the regulation you train under allows
How Log Scan Pro counts
From your logbook columns plus your baseline totals. Simulator time is excluded from any requirement that calls for aircraft time. Distances come from the From/To airports on the entry, so a cross-country typed without airports counts as time but not as cross-country distance.
Common shortfalls
- PIC time logged as dual received on flights where you were acting as PIC
- Long cross-countries missing an intermediate stop in the From/To fields
- Complex or high-performance training flown in an aircraft whose record is not flagged as complex or high performance — fix the aircraft record and the hours reclassify themselves