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3 Answers

Helicopter ATP cross country time

Asked by: 4568 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.

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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.

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  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?

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  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

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