Question about commercial rating...
 

I'm confused. Once I obtain my Private and Insturment license, then i'll go for my commercial. I read where you need 250 hoursTT to pass the commercial pilot rating. I figure once I have my Private and Insturement, i'll have 50-70TT. My question is, will I reach that 250hour minimum while training (paying 15k-20k) for the commercial licence, or is that what I have to have before I even start my Comm. training? thanks for the help.

For one, you'll get only your PPL in the 50-70hrs(avg), then another 50-70hrs is good for Instrument training. The other inbetween hours can be either all training(I recommend first getting the manuevers down with an instructor, then doing the majority solo), or doing cross-country work. If your goal is commercial, for the most part keep your flying oriented towards that goal, but you also should have fun while you're doing it. By this I mean the cross-country work should actually take you places you wouldn't go to otherwise. If you're spending the money, might as well go somewhere. Also with the manuevers, it never says you can't practice solo, or with a non-aviation friend with you. Try demonstrating the manuever, talking it through, and showing the passenger how it all works. If you can master that, then you can master the check-ride. Also while you're building your total time, go get additional Private Pilot ratings, such as the multi-add on, sea-plane, complex endorsement(required for commercial), high performance endorsement, maybe even the tail-wheel endorsement. Also you can work towards a Flight Instructor rating prior to the commercial, so once you take the commercial, you're ready to take the CFI checkride within a short amount of time. There's plenty of things you can do to build the time, and keep it fun, challenging, and interesting also.

I'm in the same boat. Just got my PPL at 50 hours and will be working on Multi then inst next. One of the things I plan to do to build hours is fly myself when I can. Like this weekend I am renting a plane to fly down to South Carolina for a wedding. It would have cost me and my girlfriend about $800 to fly comercial with a layover and other commercial pain. I am renting a plane to make the 6 hour round trip flight for less than a grand. The way I see it I will be getting 6 hours for less than $200 since I would have been spending the $800 anyway.

Thanks for the info, great post!! I might have to print it out for reference

Just to clarify for you guys- you can start the training for your commercial pilot certificate at any time (even before you take your private checkride). You only need to meet the time requirements in order to take the checkride.

Thanks, that answers my question. I was under the assumption that you had to have 250 hours to even begin your commercial training.

The commercial training portion is very short so dont start training with 140hrs unless you can drag it out for a while. It only took me 18hrs to get the Comm/Multi-engine and it probably wont take you but 10 hrs just to get the single comm. It might be worth it to get your multi-engine rating now, build up some multi time, then go for your comm and get the commercial-multi addon. If I could do it over again, I would have gotten my multi-engine rating immediately after my private/IFR and built up that time until I reached about 240hrs, then started my comm training. That way I would have had about 100hrs of ME time.

i always heard it was a better idea to get ur multi AFTER ur commercial? because then you dont have to get the multi-comm add-on or whatever? i probably have no idea what im talking about, so help me out here :p

I got my comm/multi at the same time but if I could do it over again I would have gotten my multi after my PPL/IFR and built up multi time until I started my commercial training. All I had to do to get the multi-comm addon was a single engine instrument approach so I dont think it would have been a big deal to get the PPL/Multi. I hope Im not confusing anyone. :D

hmmm... still confused :D hahaha