AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2017 - 91

Q&A with Eric Berman
The creator of
MyFlightbook.com
weighs in on electronic
logbooks.
Should the logbook be
in the cloud or on a
local desktop or laptop?
"When I started my
logbook 10 years ago,
there was no cloudbased logbook and
that seemed very silly
to me. When it's in the
cloud you have
access to it anywhere.
Hard disks crash,
laptops get lost. There
are all sorts of problems with local storage. Cloud also has the
advantage of making
bug fixes and enhancements without having
to push any updates to
the pilots. It is easier
to use with a mobile
device, since you don't
have to sync from here
to there and resolve
conflicts with data in
two places."
Should it be a dedicated logbook program
or can it be one part of
a broader app?
"This one I don't feel
nearly as strongly
about. There are certainly pros and cons. I
focus on a standalone
program because I
focus on what I think I
can do well. ForeFlight
and Garmin take the
opposite approach,
where a logbook is sort
of a natural complement to what they do.
The tradeoff there is
you get a lot of benefit
from the integration,
I can't deny that, but
it does become more
of an all-or-nothing
choice."

Is there something I
can do to secure my
information that is not
already being done?
"You shouldn't have to do
anything. Your information should be secure.
Anybody who is not
securing your information
is by default not doing a
good job. All your data
should be password
protected or otherwise
require you to authenticate yourself to access
it. Anything that is on a
server up in the cloud
needs to have database
best practices around it."
What's the status of
transferring information among electronic
logbooks? Is that
simple? Not simple?
"It's somewhere in between. There's no standardized interchange
format or anything like
that, but there are commonalities. Personally I
take a philosophy that
it should be easy to get
in and should be just
as easy to get out. It is
your data. Other providers are at various places
on that spectrum. There
are subtle differences. In
my logbook there is no
such thing as logging
multiengine time or logging high-performance
time. That was a very
explicit design decision I made, because
all of that can best be
inferred and computed
based on the aircraft
used in the flight. If you
log an hour and a half
of Boeing 737 time then
you've logged an hour
and a half of turbine
time, multiengine time,
retract [retractable
gear] time." (Berman's
program recognizes
aircraft type, but some
do not.)

How does the FAA
react to your program
and other programs
when the FAA needs
proof that you are
ready for an ATP rating
or wants to review your
logbook or see an electronic signature?
"I have three answers
for you. The first is [to
ask], is an electronic
logbook accepted? The
FAA has been explicitly
cagey on that. They do
not certify logbooks.
They say it's fine as
long as it is in a manner acceptable to the
administrator. I've never
been challenged on it.
I do have pilots who
print out because paper
is a known quantity. As
far as the acceptability
of using an electronic
logbook, I have yet
to hear of the FAA
pushing back on that
to me or to anybody
else. That doesn't mean
they haven't or won't
or don't, but just not to
me. There is an advisory circular, AC 120-78,
that talks about what
is necessary for an
electronic signature to
be valid for purposes of
signing flights or giving
endorsements-things
like that. Again, the FAA
is a little bit cagey in
that they say, 'Here are
the standards you have
to meet,' but if you ask,
'Will you certify that I
meet those standards,'
the answer is 'no.' I went
through the criteria you
have to meet and I've
self-certified. All anybody can say is, 'Yeah,
we think we are in compliance.' The third piece
is, if there is an accident
or some kind of a case,
I imagine that the FAA
could subpoena a pilot's
records. I've never had
the FAA ask me for anybody's records."

www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 91

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2017

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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202312
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202311
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202310
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202307
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202306
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202305
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202304
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202303
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202302
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202301
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202212
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202211
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202210
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202209
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202208
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202207
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202206
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202204
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202203
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202202
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202201
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202112
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202111
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202110
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202109
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202108
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202106
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_202011
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_201108
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/pilot_201011demo
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