Originally Posted by Bellanca

As far as building time for commercial, sim time in my opinion is a waste of money. I've seen places charging anywhere from $55-75 per hour for a Frasca, plus you have to have a CFI with you to log the time. So add in another $35-50 for the CFI and you are talking $90-125 per hour and once you get your commercial certificate these hours are completely worthless. For that kind of money you can hopefully find a 152 or old 172/Archer that you could build time in, preferably 50NM XC time towards Commercial and ATP if you want to go airlines.

Sim time as it place for instrument training and currency, but aside from that it isn't worth much. IMO, a wet commecial/CFI with 200TT, vs a pilot 250-300TT is significant.

When I was time-building for commercial and working on my CFI, I met a few people at the airport with old cessnas that would be willing to split the fuel costs for a $100 hamburger run, and let me fly one or both of the legs and log it. Some of these guys were just looking for an excuse to go fly, or didn't really want to fly by themselves. One of them ended up putting me on the insurance for his 152 and letting me rent it for $25/hour dry, which was a really good deal.