How to Keep Safe and Secure Aircraft Logs for Today’s Flying Clubs

Hi my name is John Miller, I have been the VP and maintenance officer for the last 15 years for the Pittsburgh Flying Club. The Club has been in operation since 1954 and as you can imagine we have had numerous aircraft over the years.  Our current airplane is a 1976 Piper PA 28 Archer. With the change of personnel and members responsibilities some of our logs for our current airplane had been lost, possibly destroyed, or vindictively disposed of; we do not know the real answer.

I have been searching for a way to keep our logs current, safe and make them accessible to more than just me. One solution was to copy everything onto a flash drive which involves a lot of duplication of the whole process. But from my research, I now have an alternative that has not been available to General Aviation before. There are companies now like Bluetail’s new offering to GA that makes my life easier by taking  photos of log records with my iPhone keeping the updates current. The app even gives “view-only” access to all the student flyers, so I can make this a teaching experience.

Since engaging the services of Bluetail for the reasons described. We have searchable logs, whether it be last time the brakes or tires were replaced, oil changes, compression checks and annual. This program is for every aircraft owner, especially in a club situation or multi/partnership owners, as a way that everyone can have access to the logs, for everything from maintenance, insurance, and check rides. 

As maintenance officer in the club, this is going to be very advantageous as opposed to searching through multiple logbooks as to when things were done and who did them. A huge advantage will be a member will have access to the records for check rides on his or her iPad. No more carrying the logs around in the aircraft or leaving them in the hangar in an unsecured manner.

The service itself can be utilized for private pilots, corporate pilots, maintenance departments, clubs, and partnerships. The company has been extremely helpful with initial set up and formatting of our logs. Through it all, Bluetail has been great in helping us set everything up.

Finally, aircraft logs are safe, secure, and accessible from anywhere and on any device.