the other kid payed him a lump sum of like $16k to get him from 0 to commercial. so my instructor "actually plays for the plane"... so if the kid flies with me, he doesn't have to shell out the money for the plane and just gives his time up to me to instruct. make sense? he can make due either way, but this way i guess he is trying to save us both money.

and rat, thats what i was trying to figure out... $4500 for 100 hours, but I don't know how many hours of instruction are usually needed for instrument and commercial. i have 0 hours so far between the two, as I just finished up my private. His hourly rate is $26/hour or $21/hour if you pay him in advance (like that other kid did)...

i hope this makes some sense. lol

In my opinion, your CFI buddy is doing something unethical. Having the guy "fly with you" means a bunch of safety pilot time. Very little of this sort of time is beneficial, I think. To ask you to accept such a deal to benefit himself doesn't sound too good.

you're right i guess, but we were going to do the safety pilot thing before he even mentioned the deal in the first place... and i know safety pilot time is not the greatest as far as specific requirements go, but it shouldn't be too bad for TT should it?

like im reading the commercial requirements now... it says that you need 250 TT, and 100 need to be PIC.. i wouldn't expect to count the safety time towards PIC(or cross country or anything else specific for that matter), but I wouldn't think it would matter towards TT.

At this point (unless you are learning in a plane you aren't rated for) any time in your total is going to be PIC. The only difference would be if you were getting your Multi. The training time is not PIC since you don't have that rating. The only exception would be an aircraft that requires 2 pilots. I don't think there are any singles that qualify.

yeah i realize that.. but im saying for the actual PIC requirement (being 100) I would only count ACTUAL PIC vs. safety pilot PIC... regardless if i had 300 PIC time (including safety pilot PIC), i'd keep building it until i had 100 actual PIC...