The Instrument Rating is added to your current Private or Commercial pilots license and allows you to fly under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). Now you don’t have to see the ground visually in order to fly from one location to another.  This is a graduate course that approximately fifty percent of pilots currently have. Many of them exercise this rating infrequently to not at all, but the experience of acquiring the rating greatly adds to their overall confidence in operating an aircraft in any type of airspace.

The basic requirements for the rating are:

Hold a current private or commercial pilot certificate

Training my be concurrent with the private or commercial rating

Have a minimum of 50 hours of qualifying cross-country flight time

Hold at least a third class medical certificate

Pass a computerized aeronautical knowledge test

Pass a practical test

If training under Part 61, Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) section 61.65, requires at least 40 hours of actual or simulated instrument flight time, including 15 hours with an instrument flight instructor, and a 250 mile x-country under simulated or actual instrument conditions with an instrument instructor.  There are additional requirements, but these are the basics.