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Counting hours from another country to fulfill commercial license requirement in the U.S.

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Commercial Pilot, Private Pilot, Student Pilot

I'm facing this situation: I'm about to finish my IFR rating, part 141 in a school here in Jacksonville, FL, and will be pursuing the Commercial license right after that. By the end of my IFR course I will have about 121 total time hours. I have about 67 flight hours from another country (BraziL) in another logbook. Can I count those hours to fulfill the requirements of 250 hours for the commercial license?? That way I would need only more 61 hours after my IFR checkride to get it, or will I have to fly the other 129 hours in order to finish?? I'm thinking why wouldnt i be able to? Flight time should be counted as flight time anywhere in the world, right? Wrong? What do you guys think? I'm reading the regulations but they only talk about currency of foreign license, which is not the case. I can't find anything that allows or restrict the use of flight time from another country for the license. I'm planning to go part 61 for my Commercial. Thanks for the replies.

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1 Answers



  1. John D. Collins on Feb 26, 2013

    Brazil is a signatory of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, so instruction received from a Brazilian flight instructor may be counted towards meeting your US requirements, see 61.41 for details. To log flight time is spelled out in 61.51 and it doesn’t mention the country in which the flying took place nor in what registry the aircraft was, so all time logged may be used to meet the experience requirements of a US rating as long as it complies with the definitions in 61.1 and other sections of CFR 14, FAR 61. The simple answer is your experience from Brazil counts.

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