Logging Flight Time

Overview

Every hour your club's aircraft spends in the air generates data that matters — to the aircraft, to the club, and to the pilots flying it. Centerline's flight log is where that data lives. Rather than a paper tally sheet tucked into a kneeboard pocket or a spreadsheet someone updates when they remember to, the flight log gives your club a single, shared, always-current record of how each aircraft has been used.

The practical stakes are high. Tach-based maintenance intervals — oil changes, 100-hour inspections, annual reviews — are tracked against the aircraft's tachometer time, not calendar dates. When a log entry updates the current tach reading, the maintenance team sees immediately how close each aircraft is to its next service. Accurate hobbs time feeds into billing and insurance reporting: many hull policies require documentation of total time in service, and discrepancies between what was flown and what was logged can complicate claims. For individual pilots, the flight log is a resource for tracking currency — knowing which aircraft you've flown recently, how much time you've accumulated, and whether you're approaching the hours needed to maintain various ratings or club endorsements. Logging carefully isn't busywork. It's the foundation everything else rests on.

Flight Logs require the Time Tracking feature to be enabled for your organization. If you don't see a Flight Logs item in the navigation, contact your club's account owner to confirm the feature is active for your club.

How to Log a Flight

1. Navigate to Flight Logs — Click Flight Logs in the navigation bar. You'll land on the main logs page, which shows your club's flight time entries sorted by date, most recent first.
2. Open the New Log Entry dialog — Click the New Log Entry button in the upper-right corner of the page (or in the toolbar on mobile). The dialog will open pre-filled with today's date and the current time in your club's timezone.
3. Select the aircraft — Use the Aircraft dropdown to choose which aircraft you flew. Only aircraft your organization has granted you access to will appear. If you filter the table to a specific aircraft before clicking New Log Entry, that aircraft will be pre-selected for you.
4. Select the pilot — If you hold a booking administrator role (ACCOUNT_OWNER, BOOKING, or MAINTENANCE), you'll see a Pilot dropdown that lets you log time on behalf of another member. This is useful for entering historical data or correcting entries when needed. Regular members always log under their own name.
5. Enter the date and time — The Date field defaults to today and the Time field defaults to the current time in your organization's configured timezone. Adjust these to match when you actually took off or completed the flight. Time is stored in 24-hour format internally but displayed according to your browser's locale.
6. Enter Start Hobbs and Start Tach — These are the meter readings you recorded before the engine started. Both fields are required. When you select an aircraft, Centerline automatically populates the start values with the end readings from that aircraft's most recent log entry, saving you from having to look them up. Always verify these against the actual cockpit instruments — if there's a discrepancy, trust the gauges.
7. Enter End Hobbs and End Tach — The meter readings recorded after engine shutdown. These fields are optional, which allows you to create a partial entry if, for example, you're logging the departure reading and will fill in the arrival reading later. However, completing both end readings is strongly recommended: the Hobbs difference drives billing calculations and the Tach difference updates the aircraft's current tach time in the fleet status view.
8. Enter Fuel Added — How many gallons of fuel you added during or after the flight (optional). Recording fuel usage helps the club track consumption patterns and plan fueling logistics.
9. Enter Oil Added — How many quarts of oil you added (optional). Oil consumption is an important engine health indicator. Even small amounts are worth logging — a consistent increase in oil consumption between flights can be an early sign of engine wear.
10. Add Comments — Any free-text notes about the flight (optional). Use this field for anything worth documenting: unusual weather, a rough mag check, a passenger flight, a training maneuver sequence, or simply "first flight after annual." These notes become part of the aircraft's permanent record.
11. Mark as Maintenance Flight — Check the Maintenance Flight checkbox if this flight was conducted for maintenance purposes — a test flight after an annual inspection, a run-up to verify a repair, a ferry flight. Maintenance flights are tagged with a wrench icon in the logs table and are reported separately in exports, which helps distinguish operational time from maintenance-related hours.
12. Submit the entry — Click Add Entry. The entry will appear at the top of the logs table, and if you provided an End Tach value, the aircraft's current tach time will be updated immediately in the fleet status view.

The Flight Time Calculator

As you type in the Hobbs and Tach fields, Centerline automatically computes and displays the elapsed time in a summary panel between the end fields and the fuel/oil section. You'll see Hobbs Time and Tach Time calculated in real time. This live preview helps you catch data-entry errors before submitting — if the numbers look implausible (a three-hour Hobbs time for a local pattern flight, or a tach time larger than the hobbs time), double-check your readings.

Editing an Entry

Log entries can be edited after submission. Find the entry in the table and click the pencil icon on the right side of its row. You can edit your own entries at any time. Booking administrators can edit any entry. Entries cannot be deleted by regular members — deletion is restricted to booking administrators to maintain log integrity.

Tips

• Log immediately after landing — The longer you wait, the harder it is to remember the exact meter readings. Make it a habit to pull up the app before you leave the flight line.
• Verify start values against the gauges — Centerline pre-fills start Hobbs and Tach from the previous entry, but those values assume the last logged entry was complete and accurate. Always confirm against the actual instrument readings in the cockpit.
• Complete both end readings when possible — Partial entries (start values only) leave a gap in the tach time record that affects maintenance interval tracking. If you forgot to record the end readings, go back and edit the entry as soon as you can.
• Use the Comments field for anomalies — If anything notable happened during the flight — a rough engine, a avionics hiccup, a bird strike, a hard landing — note it here. It gives the maintenance team context and creates a timestamped record that's useful if a squawk is filed later.
• Watch for gap warnings — If Centerline detects that your start readings don't match the previous entry's end readings, it will display a gap warning in the logs table. This usually means an entry was missed. See the Viewing and Exporting Logs article for how to resolve gaps.