Comparison
PreflightLog vs Flight Schedule Pro
One is built to run the reservation grid and the invoices for a fleet, the other is built to prove a student is ready for the examiner.
Comparison
PreflightLog vs MyFlightbook: Your Logbook or Their Progress
MyFlightbook keeps the record of what you flew, PreflightLog keeps the record of what someone else is ready to do.
The short answer
MyFlightbook is a pilot logbook, organized around the person who flew the flight. It suits an aviator keeping currency, hour buckets and signoffs in order, and that includes instructors tracking their own time toward the next certificate. PreflightLog answers a different question. Across twelve students, who has stalled, whose solo endorsement is running out of days, and whose file would survive an examiner reading it line by line. One is a record of your flying. The other is a roster of other people readiness. Most working instructors keep a logbook and still need the roster.
PreflightLog and MyFlightbook side by side
| What you are deciding | PreflightLog | MyFlightbook |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | A school record of where each student stands against the ACS and the regulation. | A logbook for the pilot who flew the flight, kept from that seat. |
| Whose record is it | Twelve students at once, sorted by who is closest to a stage check. | One aviator flying history, entered by that aviator. |
| Endorsements | Issued from the instructor side and tied to the lesson that earned them. | Signoffs are handled inside the logbook the pilot maintains. |
| Stage checks | A gate with a second instructor, a written result and a stated reason for any hold. | A personal logbook is organized around flights rather than around school gates. |
| What a chief instructor sees | Roster views showing hours, outstanding endorsements and days since the last lesson. | Reporting follows the shape of one pilot history. |
| Where the data comes from | The instructor grading the lesson during the debrief. | The pilot entering flights after landing. |
| What you carry into a checkride | Recommendation, endorsement history and the graded ACS tasks behind it. | The flight history of the applicant in the format the logbook keeps. |
| Best fit | Instructors accountable for the readiness of other people. | Pilots keeping their own hours, currency and signoffs organized. |
The right hand column places MyFlightbook by scope and by the sort of operator it serves, with no attempt at a priced feature list. What a product covers moves over time, so verify where it stands today. PreflightLog is published by MLJ, SASU and this page is written by Jimenez Julien.
Choose PreflightLog when
- You are recommending applicants and want the 61.39 window visible before you sign anything.
- You share students with a second instructor who needs to see what was flown last Tuesday.
- You cannot answer from memory which of your pre solo students still owes a graded written test.
- You want one screen that shows the whole roster instead of opening files one student at a time.
Choose MyFlightbook when
- You are one instructor with two students and paper is genuinely still working for you.
- What you actually need is a better record of your own flying and your own currency.
- Your students already keep their hours there and you are happy reading their entries.
A logbook is a history, a training record is a forecast
A logbook is complete when it correctly describes flights that already happened. That is a real and valuable job, and it is the job a pilot logbook is designed for. But when an instructor asks whether to sign a recommendation, history alone is not the answer. The question is forward looking: which ACS tasks are still outside tolerance, which hour requirements remain short, which endorsement has aged out, and what the last stage check said.
PreflightLog is built to answer that forward question. Each lesson closes with a grade against named tasks, so the gap between where the student is and what 61.109 and the ACS ask for is visible without arithmetic on a napkin. The roster sorts by that gap, which is why instructors tend to open it before they open the schedule.
Two records that should not fight each other
Students should keep a logbook. It is theirs, it follows them for a career, and an examiner will ask to see it. Nothing in PreflightLog replaces that, and the endorsement wording you issue is meant to end up in the student logbook signed in your hand or in whatever electronic form your operation uses.
What PreflightLog adds is the school side of the same story: what you observed, what you graded, when you gated the student, and why. If the two ever disagree on a date or an hour total, that disagreement is the useful signal, and it is far better found on a Tuesday evening than in front of the examiner.
The moment a logbook stops being enough
For a single instructor with two or three students, a logbook plus a notebook is honest and sufficient. The pressure arrives when the roster grows past what one memory can carry, or when a second instructor starts flying with students you also fly with, and each of you assumes the other covered the short field landings.
That is the point where a shared record earns the monthly fee. Independent CFI at $25 a month exists for exactly that transition, and Flight School at $79 covers the point where two or three instructors need to see the same roster and the same endorsement history.
Questions people ask before they choose
Does PreflightLog replace my personal logbook?
No. PreflightLog is a school side record of student progress, endorsements and readiness. Your own flight time, currency and ratings belong in your logbook, and most instructors here keep both without friction.
Can students see their own progress?
Yes, and that is usually where the value shows up first. A student who can see which ACS tasks are still outside tolerance arrives at the next lesson knowing what the hour is for, which shortens the syllabus more reliably than any pep talk.
What happens to the record when a student switches instructors?
The record stays with the school, not with whoever flew last. The new instructor opens the same graded task list, the same endorsement history and the same stage check notes. That handoff is one of the main reasons two instructor operations move off paper.
Other comparisons on preflightlog.com
Comparison
PreflightLog vs Talon Systems ETA
One is built for academies with a records office and institutional reporting, the other for the instructor who flew the lesson and enters the grade.
Run the head to head against your own students
A table settles the shape of each product but not the fit with your operation. Twenty minutes with your roster loaded shows which of these two would have caught the last recommendation you dated outside the window. No slides, just the grade sheet, the endorsement history and the stage check gate.