That's the exact reason why i had to do some extra time building during my Recency and because of this crapy rule i was not able to enroll into an AFI course.
The DGCA
requires 100 Hrs of SOLO time . When i did my Initial training to obtain my CPL, I had only 88Hrs of SOLO time, but i had more than 160Hrs of PIC time. I was very bluntly told by people that you need 100 Hrs SOLO time, so guys please keep that in Mind.
Although this is not related to the topic, but i would like to share my experience. After My CPL when i visited one of the Flying School to try enroll my self into the AFI course, after a brief scrutiny of my logbook, i was told by the CFI that i will need to do 100 Hrs of Patter flying because i just have 100 Hrs of solo flying and in order to be eligible for the AFI rating you need minimum of 200hrs of SOLO flying!!! They didn't give a damn about PIC hours, total time,night time etc etc... So i was looking at another investment of close to 10 Lacs for AFI, hence politely walked away!!
While walking out of the CFI's room heard him talk to one of the AFI's present there, " Pata nahi saaley kahan se aa jaatein hai. 100 ghante solo kiya hai aur AFI banega!!" A lil later got the chance to meet one of the student undergoing his AFI rating, so i asked him that how many hours of Patter Flying did he need to do??? About 28 hrs was his reply!!! I was Shocked. I was told that at Flying Schools in India while completing 200 Hrs of Flying for obtaining CPL the students log close to 170 Hrs as SOLO time and about 30-40 hrs of Dual time.
I am not at all trying to start a Fight between pilots trained in India and Pilots with Indian CPL, trained abroad, but I personally find it extremely hard to believe that a student here in India flies 170 Hrs Solo during his CPL training.I have hardly seen students flying solo here, they are always seen to be flying in pairs or with a safety pilot on board. Not fair!!!
Any Inputs?