Part of the Safelog design philosophy is to provide pilots with mechanisms to log things as they'd like to or as their particular regulatory agency or company requires them to. This means that we try to give you quite a bit of flexibility to log things the way that you like. What we certainly don't do is constrain you to one universal "our way." Therefore, please understand that the discussion here (and in fact anywhere in our product) does not represent legal or regulatory advice - it is intended to generally describe our tools' capabilities and the boundaries in which our designers thought pilots might use them. As some of the following comes very close to describing regulatory matters, the following discussion is intentionally couched in qualifying terms order to further emphasize that the existence of differing interpretations and regulations of all sorts (between people, over time, in different regulatory environments, etc.) related to the these fields.

So with that disclaimer out of the way, here's a bit of discussion as to how Safelog handles "Holder's Operating Capacity' and "Handling Role" fields.

Holder's Operating Capacity

The Holder's Operating Capacity (often simply referred to as "Operating Capacity") field is generally enabled when you initially choose a basic logbook type in Safelog. For example, EASA logbooks typically have this, FAA and Canada ones do not. Others vary.

• Most pilots understand this field to refer to the legal capacity under which the logbook owner undertook the flight.
• This is a text field with an abbreviated value. Some of the built-in values for this are: P1, P2, P3, PIC, SIC, SPIC, P/UT, PICUS, P2X, SNY, DUAL, INST, EXAM, and more. Not all of these abbreviations are valid for all times and all regulatory environments.
• It is your responsibility to determine which of these applies to your flights. We cannot provide legal or quasi-legal advice on this.
• What we do, however, is provide some measure of consistency checking when you select one of these. For example, if you select P1 or PIC as your operating capacity, Safelog's flight entry screens will direct you to enter flight times in corresponding P1 and/or PIC fields while covering or hiding P2/SIC fields. You can over-ride these consistency checks if you really need to, though we believe that most pilots will be happy with as we're doing this.
• The logbook consistency checker under SafelogWeb.com .. Other Tools .. Totals Mismatch Troubleshooter can help you find cases where there are apparent issues with your Holder's Operating Capacity values.
• Whenever Safelog needs to determine some values based on your entry for Operating Capacity fields or if Safelog has occasion to itself determine the value of the Operating Capacity field based on other aspects of your logged flight the resulting approximations will generally be pretty accurate but there's no way to guarantee that they will ever be perfect. This normally only applies to pilots using reports or currency checkers outside of their logbook's basic format -- consider the many subtle differences between logging FAA PIC and EASA PIC/P1. Our system does its reasonable best in such cases, but this someitmes runs into interpretive grey areas often at the limits of the provided data, so use caution.
• A particularly common point of contention among pilots is the question of whether "pilot in command" time includes or does not include PIC/US. Because our experience has shown that pilots in different regulatory environments want different answers to this question at different times, we provide an explicit option to tell us yes or no to this at the point of data generation (such as in certain logbook printouts).
• Safelog will occasionally have to infer Holder's Operating Capacity from flight time fields in imported data sets. In some cases, we are able to ask you for clarification right then and there as to what your preferences are. In other cases, including during certain automated imports, there is no such possibility. Should you wish to change your Operating Capacity values in bulk, go to SafelogWeb.com ... Other Tools .. Mass Actions where you can do this.
• You can see your totals by Holder's Operating Capacity by going to the "Totals" from the main logbook view and selecting "(Holders) Operating Capacity" as a row or column, as available.
• There are several articles on the internet helping clarify appropriate values for the Holder's Operating Capacity field. While we can't claim that any one is authoritative, if you are confused as to what you should be logging, one of those articles, your flight instructor / company, and/or the applicable regulations are a good place to start.

Handling Role

"Handling Role" is broadly understood to mean something more akin to what you actually did on the flight that day rather than your legal role in the flight. This field is normally used only by professional pilots.

• The option to turn on a "Handing Role" field can be turned on under Setup ... Airline Options.
• The most common values for this are PF (Pilot Flying) and PNF (Pilot Not Flying) and/or PM (Pilot Monitoring). We also provide a few other values by default that you may choose to use.
• Unlike the Holder's Operating Capacity field, which has implications for and links to a number of flight time fields and, by extension, currency items, the Handling Role field is quite independent with few particular deep implications or connections. Our experience has shown that quite a few professional pilots don't log this field, but we cannot say whether you personally are required to or not.
• You can see your totals by Handling Role by going to the "Totals" from the main logbook view and selecting "Handling Role" as a row or column, as available.