Digital logbooks and Spain's RD 182/2026: what changes for ULM pilots

Royal Decree 182/2026 settled something ultralight pilots in Spain had been waiting on for years: your flight time record can be kept in digital form, and AESA accepts it as long as it holds the same information as the paper logbook.

In practice that means you are no longer tied to a physical notebook you can lose, soak or fill in with arithmetic errors. But the change comes with details worth knowing.

What the rule requires

A valid record — on paper or digital — must capture, as a minimum, for every flight:

• Date of the flight.
• Departure and arrival aerodrome (ICAO designator).
• Departure and arrival times, and the resulting flight time.
• Aircraft flown (registration and type).
• Function on board: PIC (pilot in command), dual, SPIC, instructor, and so on.
• Number of landings, counted separately for day and night.

What matters is not the medium but that the information is complete, consistent and exportable to a standard format whenever AESA asks for it.

Why a digital logbook makes this easier

Keeping this by hand is tedious and error-prone, above all when you have to total the hours by function at the end of each page. A digital logbook solves exactly that:

1. Automatic totals for PIC, dual, SPIC and landings. No adding up by hand.
2. PDF export in the format AESA expects, in one click.
3. A backup in the cloud: lose your phone and you still have your history.

How to start without losing the hours you already have

Before importing, decide where the old record ends and the new one begins. The aim is for each flight to count once. Keep the original logbook so you can check the transferred data against it.

1. Choose a cut-off date

For example, you could close the paper record on 31 August 2026 and log flights from 1 September 2026 digitally. This is an organisational choice for this example, not a regulatory deadline. Note the closing totals separately: total time, PIC, dual, instructor and landings.

2. Decide what to transfer

There are two ways to organise the history:

• Opening balance plus new flights: enter the accumulated hours and landings up to the cut-off date, then add only later flights.
• Individual historical flights: import the old entries you want to retain in detail. Your opening balance must cover only what those entries exclude.

Fictional example: your paper record totals 120:00 on 31 August. If you enter 120:00 as an opening balance and also import the same flights totalling 120:00, the result will be 240:00. Represent those hours through the balance or the entries, without including them in both.

You can also combine the methods without overlap: an opening balance of 100:00 from before a period plus 20:00 of flights within that period gives 120:00. Apply the same separation to each function column and to landings; do not guess the allocation if you lack the original breakdown.

3. Review the file or photo reading

You can start from Excel, SkyDemon files or a photo of the logbook using OCR. Before accepting the data, check:

• Dates and times: make sure day and month are in the right order and 01:30 has not been interpreted as 1.30 decimal hours.
• Aircraft and places: check that registration, model, departure and arrival match each row.
• Functions: verify that PIC, dual and instructor time reach their respective columns. Instructor time that is also PIC must not count twice towards the total.
• Landings: preserve the count, including flights with several circuits.
• Reading errors and duplicates: look for misread digits, shifted rows and flights you had already entered.

If a value differs from the paper record, return to the original entry before accepting it. Keep a copy of the source file and avoid repeating a whole import to fix a single row.

4. Reconcile before continuing

Compare the result with your paper closing figures: total time first, then each function, and finally landings. Also check an entry from the beginning and another from the end of the imported period. If total time matches but a function does not, there is still an error to resolve.

The guide to filling in a ULM logbook includes a complete flight and a closing table to practise this check. You can explore the product’s options in the pilot logbook.

In short

RD 182/2026 does not force you to go digital, but it opens the door to doing so with full legal standing. If you are tired of the notebook and of reconciling hours by hand, this is the moment to move to a digital logbook that meets the rule and exports the official PDF when you need it.

You can see every requirement broken down in our Spain pilot logbook guide.