Moving from a paper logbook to digital: what to copy, what to leave behind

Most pilots who still use a paper logbook aren't attached to paper for its own sake. They're attached to knowing that ten years of flight history won't vanish if a company shuts down or an app stops working. That's a reasonable concern, and the answer to it is not "don't switch to digital" — it's switch to digital in a way that keeps the paper book available as a backup.

This article is about doing that well.

Is a digital logbook legal?

Yes. The UK CAA accepts digital logbooks provided they record the information required by UK ANO 2016 and EASA Part-FCL, and provided you can present that information to an examiner or inspector on request. There is no rule that says "it must be on paper". What there is is a rule that says "you must have a record of every flight, and you must be able to produce it".

What this means in practice:

You can keep your logbook in any format — paper, spreadsheet, app — as long as it contains the required fields.
You must be able to produce it when asked (for a checkride, a licence revalidation, an audit, or a medical).
It needs to be genuine — i.e. the data must reflect what actually happened. You cannot retrospectively edit entries to claim experience you didn't have. Digital logbooks that keep an audit trail of edits are actively helpful here.

Required fields (at minimum)

The CAA and EASA expect every logged flight to contain, at minimum:

Date (local or UTC — we store UTC internally)
Aircraft type and registration
Departure airport (ICAO)
Arrival airport (ICAO)
Take-off and landing times (UTC)
Total flight time
Pilot function (P1/PIC, P1us, P2/SIC, dual, instructor, etc.)
Landings (day, night, separately)
Night time (where applicable)
Instrument time (actual and simulated, separately)
Remarks (optional but strongly recommended for unusual events)

There are additional fields that are not strictly required but are strongly recommended: cross-country time, simulator time (kept separate), type-rating endorsements, signatures for checkrides, and any relevant regulatory references.

How to do the transfer well

Here is the approach we recommend.

1. Don't throw the paper book away.

Keep it. Even after everything is digitised. Put it in a drawer and forget about it — it costs nothing to keep and is your ultimate backup if anything ever goes wrong with the digital record. If you're ever asked to prove historical experience, you have an unambiguous paper trail signed by the instructors and examiners who were there.

2. Enter the totals first, not every flight.

For most pilots, entering every historical flight one at a time is not worth the effort. Instead, enter:

Your totals at transfer date as a single "brought-forward" entry. For example: "Total flight time brought forward as of 1 April 2026: 312h 15m (P1: 250h, dual: 62h, night: 28h, instrument: 14h)". This gives your digital logbook the right starting baseline without requiring perfect transcription of every historical flight.
Every flight from the transfer date onwards in full detail, in the digital book.

Some pilots want a fully detailed digital record of every historical flight and will transcribe the paper book page by page. That is fine and occasionally useful. It is also time-consuming and rarely necessary. Decide how much completeness you want, pick a strategy, and commit to it.

3. Audit your currency on day one.

Immediately after transfer, verify that your currency status in the digital book matches what you know to be true from the paper book. Your passenger currency, night currency, and any instrument currency should all line up. If they don't, you have either a data-entry bug or an interpretation bug in the app — either is a reason to fix it before you rely on it.

4. Back up monthly.

Every decent digital logbook will let you export your full data set as CSV or PDF. Do that once a month and keep the export somewhere safe (your own cloud storage, a USB stick, your email). This is your defence against any single provider failing.

5. Print a PDF before each checkride.

When you're preparing for a checkride, revalidation flight, or licence proficiency check (LPC), print a PDF of your logbook for the examiner. It should follow the format they expect — columns they recognise, totals they can verify, and signatures where appropriate. Ask the examiner in advance whether they'd prefer paper or a PDF on a tablet; many are happy with either.

What to leave behind

A few paper habits that don't translate well to digital:

Hand-calculated totals. Let the software sum your hours. Humans make arithmetic mistakes; computers don't.
Rough columns and scribbles. If you need a notes field, use the remarks column. Don't try to recreate the visual layout of the paper page.
Entering times in local time. Digital logbooks should store UTC internally and display your local time only as a convenience. This avoids the "my flight crossed midnight" problem entirely.
"I'll write it in later." Digital logbooks are fast enough that you can log a flight in under a minute. If you log it the moment you land, you'll never forget a detail or lose a receipt.

What to look for in a digital logbook

If you're evaluating options:

Does it calculate EASA currency correctly? Ask the vendor directly how they implement 90-day windows. If the answer involves "hours since last flight" rather than "calendar days", keep looking.
Does it keep simulator time separate from flight time? If there is a combined total anywhere that aggregates the two, that's a red flag for EASA use.
Does it calculate night time from civil twilight? A fixed-hour sunset table is acceptable for a club notebook but not for a compliant digital logbook.
Can you export everything, any time, for free? If export is paywalled, your data isn't really yours.
Where is the data hosted? For UK pilots, UK or EU hosting is a nice-to-have for GDPR reasons. For everyone, "we host it somewhere reputable and tell you where" is the minimum standard.
Does the vendor have a stable business model? A free-forever app backed by ads or data sales is a liability. Pay for software that cares about longevity.

A practical transfer checklist

Decide: full transcription or totals brought forward?
Enter totals (or begin transcription) in the digital app.
Verify that your currency status matches what you expect.
Log every flight from the transfer date forward, every time.
Keep the paper book. Put it in a drawer.
Export a CSV backup once a month.
Print a PDF for your next checkride and confirm the examiner accepts the format.

And then get on with flying. That's the point.