Originally Posted by
Photon
For the instrument rating, the part 141 version lets you get away with less nasty cross countries, and less hours.
For the commercial, again you only need about 35 hours or so for the commercial course itself.
I'm a CPL now, did it all part 141 here in Florida, and walked away with about 150 hours after my commercial rating. I Expect around 190 hours or so after I have my single-commercial, CFI, CFII and MEI
You must be doing a FITS Commercial if you have that few hours. Most schools don't do that. In fact, Part 141 requires 120 hours of training toward the Commercial alone. While that is, for most students, less than the 250 TT requirement in Part 61, there is still a substantial amount of time involved unless the school has a special syllabus allowing proficiency-based training. Again, that is an abnormal situation although it may become more popular.
As for the IFR, those nasty cross countries are really what soon-to-be Instrument pilots need. Any monkey can shoot an approach, but remember that your life will be spent flying from A to B in any kind of weather. Shooting the approach is 10 minutes out of a 2 or 3 hour flight. The stuff in between is very important as well. The biggest thing about Part 61 is the requirement of 50 XC hours before doing your IR. If you want the time and you are going to do the Commercial as a Part 61, then you should do the IR the same. If you do the Commercial under Part 141, then you have a choice to make.