3 things your paper logbook will never warn you about

A paper logbook records everything and predicts nothing. Every fact needed to prevent the three scenarios below was already written down, in the pilot's own handwriting. The book just had no way to say it out loud.

1. Night currency that expired mid-trip

You planned the return leg for Sunday evening. Your last three night full-stop landings were 91 days ago — 88 when you departed on Friday. The book knew on Friday. You found out when you did the math at the FBO, with passengers watching you rebook their airline connection.

2. The flight review that expired at month's end

"24 calendar months" feels generous until you realize your review was signed early in a month two years ago. Renters discover this one when the school's scheduling system blocks them; owners discover it airborne, retroactively, which is worse.

3. The IFR grace period you didn't know you were in

Six approaches in six months quietly became zero in month seven. You're now in the 61.57(d) grace window: legal to fly with a safety pilot to regain currency, not legal to file. Pilots in this window routinely file anyway — not out of recklessness, but because nothing told them the window had opened.

The pattern

In all three cases the failure isn't record-keeping — the record was perfect. The failure is that paper can't compute. Currency is arithmetic over dates, and arithmetic is exactly the job you should hand to software: something that reads your flights, runs every clock, and tells you what expires next weekend before you plan around it.