I did my PPL out in the US and I went back this year to build some hours. At the CAA school I used automatic passes on reaching 40 hours were not the order of the day.
I was fortunate last year to have British Instructors, chaps out there this year were sitting their Nav exams having never seen a CAA 1/2mil! The US instructors - whilst absolutly excellent were not always up to speed on the CAA sylabus.
Another school not a million miles away from a certain raceway had a VERY serious accident whilst I was over there this year - one of their overused Cessnas became a lawn dart at night. I am led to believe that the ethos of the school concerned was to have students fly during the day and hour builders fly at night.
I have also heard that someone did a survey on the pilots involved in GASIL reports and found that a high proportion originated from the same school.
I'm not going to suggest that CAA/JAA training be banned outside of Europe but I think the CAA should be taking more of an interest in how these places are run and the state of the aircraft being used. I've also found some pretty apaulling pilots over here who've spent all their PPL lives flying in the UK for 5 hours every year - its not only the USA that breeds them
[This message has been edited by StudentInDebt (edited 14 September 1999).]