Aerolog vs LogTen Pro: an honest pilot logbook comparison

LogTen Pro is the logbook most professional pilots have heard of. It has been around for years, it is thorough, and plenty of crews are perfectly happy with it. If you are searching for a LogTen Pro alternative, it is usually for one of two reasons: the amount of manual entry involved, or the feel of the app on a modern iPhone. This is an honest look at where Aerolog differs — written by the pilot who builds it, so treat it as a point of view rather than a neutral review.

Roster import is the real difference

On a line-flying schedule, the question is not "can I record a flight" — every logbook can do that. The question is how many taps stand between a published roster and a complete month.

Aerolog is built around an iCal roster feed. You paste the URL your crew portal gives you once, and from then on new duties arrive on their own. Non-flying duties (standby, sim, office, training) are filtered out, the remaining sectors are staged as pending, and block times, night time, and IFR time are pre-computed from the route. Your job is to confirm, not to type. A month of short-haul is typically a couple of minutes of review.

Traditional logbooks, LogTen Pro included, lean on manual entry, templates, and CSV imports to get flights into the book. That is a legitimate approach and it gives you complete control — but the effort scales with how much you fly, and it is what most people are trying to escape when they go looking for something else.

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Night and IFR time you don't have to compute

Night time is defined by civil twilight, not by sunset, and it has to be evaluated along the track you actually flew. Aerolog computes it from the great-circle route and twilight tables on every imported flight, and lets you override the value when reality differed. The same goes for the IFR portion. There is a full explainer in how night time is legally defined if you want the details.

Built for a current iPhone

Aerolog is iOS-first and recent: dark interface, a home screen that tells you what needs attention, a map of where you have flown, and totals that update as you confirm flights. It is a smaller app with a narrower feature set than a decade-old product — that is the trade-off. If you need a very specific certificate report or an unusual custom column today, a mature logbook may still serve you better.

Your data stays portable

Whichever way you go, insist on getting your logbook back out. Aerolog exports CSV for spreadsheets, a printable PDF formatted for authority inspection, and a full JSON backup. Switching in should never mean you cannot switch out.

Which one should you pick

• You fly a published airline roster. The iCal import is the reason Aerolog exists — this is the case it is built for.
• You want the shortest path from roster to compliant logbook. Confirming pending flights beats typing them.
• You depend on a long tail of legacy reports or a non-iOS device. Stay where you are for now; tell us what is missing on the feedback page and it goes on the public roadmap.

Aerolog is developed in the open and shaped by what pilots ask for. If something here does not match your experience, say so — that is how the app gets better.