Welcome Guest. Sign in or Signup

3 Answers

Helicopter ATP cross country time

Asked by: 4567 views , , , ,
Commercial Pilot, FAA Regulations, Helicopter

For pilots counting cross country time towards an ATP airplane certificate, they can count those flights where they flew more than 50nm from the point of departure, but did not necessarily make any landings.
My question is regarding pilots counting cross country time towards an ATP helicopter certificate. Can pilots count those flights where they flew more than 25nm from the point of departure but did not make any landings?

The FAR AIM doesn't even address this, or maybe I missed it.

Ace Any FAA Written Test!
Actual FAA Questions / Free Lifetime Updates
The best explanations in the business
Fast, efficient study.
Pass Your Checkride With Confidence!
FAA Practical Test prep that reflects actual checkrides.
Any checkride: Airplane, Helicopter, Glider, etc.
Written and maintained by actual pilot examiners and master CFIs.
The World's Most Trusted eLogbook
Be Organized, Current, Professional, and Safe.
Highly customizable - for student pilots through pros.
Free Transition Service for users of other eLogs.
Our sincere thanks to pilots such as yourself who support AskACFI while helping themselves by using the awesome PC, Mac, iPhone/iPad, and Android aviation apps of our sponsors.

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer


    Kris Kortokrax on Nov 26, 2016

    You have read the regulation correctly, which means that it does address it.

    I went back to the preamble for the rule from 1997. It states specifically that airplane ATP candidates are not required to make a landing and the helicopter ATP applicants are required to make a landing.

    I had done flights like this even before the rule was written. I did traffic reporting and pipeline patrol. When doing these operations, I just landed at an airport or heliport that was more than 25 NM from the departure and all the time then counts. It doesn’t take a whole lot of effort. Same thing if training instrument students, just land after an approach and there is no problem.

    +2 Votes Thumb up 4 Votes Thumb down 2 Votes



  2. Lina N on Dec 04, 2016

    Kris- I have another question.. for the purposes of logging XC time for 135 operations (point to point without distance requirements), do off airport landings count? Or must the landings be at published airport/heliports?

    0 Votes Thumb up 0 Votes Thumb down 0 Votes



  3. Kris Kortokrax on Jan 12, 2017

    You only need to land at a point other than the departure. No stated need for it to be an airport or heliport

    +1 Votes Thumb up 2 Votes Thumb down 1 Votes


The following terms have been auto-detected the question above and any answers or discussion provided. Click on a term to see its definition from the Dauntless Aviation JargonBuster Glossary.

Answer Question

Our sincere thanks to all who contribute constructively to this forum in answering flight training questions. If you are a flight instructor or represent a flight school / FBO offering flight instruction, you are welcome to include links to your site and related contact information as it pertains to offering local flight instruction in a specific geographic area. Additionally, direct links to FAA and related official government sources of information are welcome. However we thank you for your understanding that links to other sites or text that may be construed as explicit or implicit advertising of other business, sites, or goods/services are not permitted even if such links nominally are relevant to the question asked.