Recently the DGCA in India changed some aspects of the licensing regulations for the Commercial Pilot’s License with Instrument Rating (Section L).   We had the opportunity to sit with Mr. V.P. Singh, Deputy Director of the Directorate of Training and Licensing of the DGCA, on 10 May 2010 to review those changes.

The following is an explanation of some of those changes.

On December 3, 2009 the following changes to the India regulations were posted.  Under flight experience for a CPL with instrument rating, the following was changed.  100 hours of flight time as Pilot-in-Command is still required.  Up to 30 hours of that 100 hours PIC time requirement can now be logged under what is called “Student Pilot-in-Command” experience.   Student Pilot-in-command (SPIC) time is further indicated in a note as only being given by a flight instructor and the flight time accrued “shall not be logged by (the) instructor in his own log book.”   The student’s logbook must also indicate that this flight time was “SPIC” and list the name of the instructor.

Mr. Singh indicated that if the flight instructor must take the controls on any SPIC flight, the entire flight should be disallowed as SPIC.

Additional limitations of the SPIC flight time allow no more than 20 hours to be logged as cross-country and no more than 10 hours in the traffic pattern.  Therefore, at least 70 hours must still be logged as solo with at least 30 hours of that time solo cross-country.

The new regulations continue not to allow what is commonly called safety pilot time to be counted towards the 100 solo/PIC hours.

Other regulation requirements for pilots seeking the DGCA CPL remain unchanged:

• 200 total flight hours completed within the previous 5 years
• 15 hours PIC within preceding 6 months
• 50 hours of instrument time with not more than 20 hours on an approved simulator and 5 hours witin the preceding 6 months
• 5 hours of night including 10 takeoffs and landings as PIC (sole manipulator of the flight controls) carried out within the preceding 6 months