Originally Posted by
rotorhead1026
It's really rare for someone to go for their multi first (primary training scenario), but not unheard of. I didn't even know about it until a couple of years ago (through this board, actually). It's not a good thing (which could explain the FSDO's attitude), but I see the practical necessity - somewhat.
At our flight school about 3 years ago, we had a group of Panamanian Flight Students come through our Commercial Multi program when all of them had just a Private Single in Panama. Since we didn't have a 141 syllabus for that, they did it 61 all in the seminole but our insurance company put the squash on them flying our seminoles solo for 10 hrs so we had to do the "supervised solo" thing.
Since then, they have gotten a 141 Commercial AMEL (initial) syllabus approved (meant for students with just private ASEL and Instr. only) in addition to the Commercial ASEL and AMEL Add on to the Commercial ones however, I believe that the students must do 10 hrs of "supervised solo" due to the insurance company even though it is 141 as well.