CamelhAir,
I'll have to disagree with you there.
"If your flying an airliner, every flight will be IFR so who really cares about any time other than your total time." Not true. I fly airliners and before that I spent several years flying large military 4-jet tankers and transports. I have had flights in large airliners where we have never gone into cloud for the entire time of being airborne - and thats from Europe to the USA. Therefore, NONE of it was instrument flight in the technical sense of the logbook; none of it was done by 'sole reference to instruments'.
I may fly an instrument approach for just about every arrival but that does NOT mean I am instrument flying - I am merely using the instrument approach to sequence in with everybody else and line up with the runway, because all the other aircraft are doing likewise and ATC likes that way ..... as does my company. But I am not necessarily instrument flying. Get my drift?