I think he's only meaning that it's not fun reading. I don't read a lacksadasical attitude in his statement, necessarily, of that info being unimportant.
Yeah, I actually wasn't referring so much to the actual reading and loving the FARs, so much as the maybe, innocent? attitude that the training would be as he originally indicated with starting out with a 3 hour nite x/c,and so on.
If he already has personal personal knowledge of this individual's airplane skills, in light singles, if that is the checkride type, and he is looking for the minimum time to "officially log", then normally good training would follow the basic fundamental skills first, so the stage was set in my mind ( and other young reader's minds) to hear a "quickie" rating add-on.
Now, to the question, his question about the hours. He, like many others, may be you, I don't know, have made the "break-down' argument, ie., 3 of this, single engine, 3 of that, single engine, yadda, yadda, yadda, and it doesn't come up to 20 hours dual like 61.109(a) says "20 hours of flight training from an authorized instructor(airplane cfi)...in the areas of operation listed in 61.107(b)(1)
The 61.107(b)(1) is Airplane Single Engine. That's all. That 20 hours must be in ASEL, the 109(a) break down is a list of must have in certain training areas, but these minimums do not add up to the total required.
Look at the total required at first in 109(a), 40 total, 20 dual, 10 solo. That's 30. The individual makes up the program.
And I know the interpretation of that 107(b), has been "deemed" by some FSDOs and many DEs over the years, but, that's slowly changing, too, like the current sudden awareness that the 10 hours instrument in commercial are not exempted by merely having the instrument rating. The regulation has always required this under 61.129 which governs "commercial training", not "instrument training", which is non-commercial.
The intent would be to further advance the already instrument rated commercial applicants, or upgrade the non-instrument rated commercial applicants to at least a 10 hours level.
But, of course, that "interpretation" wasn't very economically popular, so it became habit to accept the instrument rating as acceptable for the commercial 10 hour requirement, but not any more.
And so is the gradual changing to the legal reading of the 61.109 reference to 61.107 as all single engine.
Depends on your neighbor hood.
And I do apologize for being rude and snappy. Wasn't nice and it never works.