The Reddit thread encapsulates a perennial question among instrument students: is the FAA's 40-hour instrument time minimum (15 hours of which must be with an instructor, plus 50 hours of cross-country PIC time as a prerequisite) a realistic target for a working pilot flying two to three times a week, and does hitting those minimums actually translate into checkride readiness? The original poster, with roughly 15 hours of cross-country PIC logged, is essentially asking a question that shows up constantly in flight training forums and at FBOs: can accelerated but steady training compress a rating that traditionally takes four to six months into a three-month window. The answer from experienced CFIs and working pilots is almost universally the same — the regulatory minimums are a floor, not a target, and true proficiency in actual or simulated IMC typically requires closer to 50-60 total hours of instrument instruction, particularly for pilots who haven't yet built strong scan habits, single-pilot IFR workload management, or approach procedure fluency.
For working pilots and flight instructors, this conversation matters beyond nostalgia for their own training days. The instrument rating is the single most consequential building-block certificate in a professional pilot's career — it's the first time a student pilot has to fly precisely to tolerances, manage cockpit resource allocation under instrument workload, and internalize the kind of procedural discipline that later shows up in SOPs, checklists, and CRM. Pilots who scrape by at minimum hours with weak fundamentals often carry those gaps forward into commercial and multi-engine training, where instructors then have to remediate basic attitude instrument flying instead of building on it. This is a recurring theme in mentorship discussions among corporate and airline pilots who serve as CFIs or informal mentors to student pilots: the rush toward ATP minimums and airline hiring has created pressure to treat every rating as a box to check as quickly as possible, rather than a skill to be genuinely mastered.
The three-times-a-week training cadence the poster describes is actually close to ideal from a learning-retention standpoint — frequent enough to prevent skill decay between lessons, but spaced enough to allow consolidation, especially for procedures like holds, DME arcs, and approach briefings that benefit from repetition over multiple sessions rather than cramming. Flight schools running accelerated 10-14 day instrument courses can get pilots through the checkride faster, but the tradeoff is well documented: students in condensed courses often report feeling "current but not yet competent," passing the practical test while still building real confidence in actual IMC, which typically comes only after dozens of hours flying approaches to minimums in genuine weather post-certification. This mirrors the broader industry conversation about accelerated ATP and R-ATP pathways, structured programs at universities and academies, and the tension airlines and Part 135 operators now navigate when hiring pilots who technically meet time-in-type or total-time requirements but have limited exposure to actual adverse conditions.
This thread also reflects a broader cultural shift within general aviation training communities, where forums like r/flying have become informal mentorship networks supplementing traditional CFI relationships. Prospective and current instrument students increasingly crowdsource expectations about training pace, checkride readiness, and post-certification proficiency from working pilots rather than relying solely on their assigned instructor's timeline. For flight schools, Part 141 programs, and individual CFIs, this underscores the importance of setting realistic expectations early — framing the instrument rating not as a hurdle to clear in the fewest hours possible, but as the foundation for every subsequent phase of instrument flying, from single-pilot IFR in a piston twin to two-crew SOP-driven operations in a jet. The consensus among experienced respondents to this kind of question is consistent: hitting the minimums might get a pilot to the checkride, but true readiness — the kind that translates to safe single-pilot IFR decision-making — usually requires flying beyond them.