CFI · Chief Pilot · Regional Airline Pilot · Software Engineer
He built the tool he couldn't afford to buy — and then made it available to every pilot who's ever had to choose between paying for flight time and paying for a logbook audit.
Most people pick a lane. Our founder didn't. By the time he was 23, he'd already been a CFI, a standardizing instructor, a chief pilot, a Part 135 charter pilot, and a Part 121 regional airline pilot — with over 2,000 hours in the logbook. He did it while finishing a Computer Science and Engineering degree at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, one of the most respected aviation schools in the world.
That combination — deep technical flight experience and a CS background — turned out to be exactly what was needed to build something that didn't exist yet.
“I was told my logbook needed to be audited before my airline interview. Every service I could find charged $600 to $800 minimum. I'd spent every dollar I had on airplanes. That bill felt like a bad joke.”
— Gillam, Founder
Going through the airline interview process is already stressful. When our founder was preparing for his, he was told his logbook needed to be professionally audited — a standard step to make sure your hours, currency, and logging are clean before they go under a recruiter's microscope.
What he found was that every service offering this cost $600 to $800. For someone who'd genuinely spent everything they had on becoming a pilot, that wasn't just expensive — it was a wall. Flight training is already one of the most expensive paths in aviation. Having to pay hundreds of dollars more just to verify your own logbook felt wrong.
So he did what engineers do: he built the tool himself.
He took everything he knew as a CFI — every regulatory nuance, every common logging mistake, every edge case that shows up in a real logbook — and encoded it into a system that could audit a logbook the way a fresh, experienced set of eyes would. Not a checklist. Not a simple column sum. A genuine regulatory analysis that checks internal flight logic, catches impossible time entries, flags SIC conflicts, verifies currency, and cross-references totals the way an airline chief pilot actually would.
The CS degree and the instructor brain turned out to be a surprisingly good combination.
He built ClearedLog to make the same audit he built for himself available to every student and CFI who shouldn't have to choose between affording an audit and affording flight training. At $9.99, it's a tool — not a luxury. The only people who should be paying $600 for a logbook review are the ones who prefer it that way.
ClearedLog isn't a generic document-scanning service. The audit logic comes from someone who has sat in the left seat under Part 121 ops, given dual instruction in the pattern, managed schedules as a chief pilot, and logged charter time under Part 135 ops specs. Every flag the system raises — or deliberately doesn't raise — reflects real-world regulatory knowledge, not just a reading of the FARs.
If you have questions about your results, the support team is standing by at clearedlog.com/support. We're pilots too — and we're here to help.
Upload your logbook. Get your audit. Know where you stand.
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