As a newbie to the forum and someone who is only just embarking on the road to my PPL,I follow these threads with great interest.
I have looked at the options available for getting my training at a reasonable price and what would be available in flying opportunities once qualified.
The US option looked attractive but then the costs of the flights there and back had to be factored in.
My local area flying clubs also comment on the level of competence of US qualified pilots and also comment that after a check flight, many require further training before being allowed to fly in club aircraft.
Basically, on what we have already seen, they leave a lot to be desired. They are very much like a sausage factory. Generally, they last for three weeks and that is not long enough to teach anyone to fly even if they were straight out of university and soak everything up first time. If you consider the cost of American training plus the additional cost of settling down in UK airspace and getting to grips with the fickle UK weather, then, in our opinion you would be better off training in the UK and taking a more leisurely time over it. The quality of the training in the UK would be well worth it particularly if you were intending to go on for a JAR professional licence in the future. There are several problems associated with US training. The first is sitting JAR exams on JAR air law in the US and then having to fly a US registered aircraft in accordance with US law in the US!! I hope this makes sense. If not, we will be pleased to explain it to you. We have had several US qualified pilots with UK licences who have needed over four hours dual training before letting them loose on our aircraft
There is also the tale of one particular student who insisted on using the brakes to slow or hold the aircraft instead of throttling back and despite several requests to desist, would not and cancelled his check flight.
Needless to say, he didnt get to fly any club aircraft.
Now as stated, I am a newbie so dont really know if it is the clubs trying to keep business at home or genuine concern at the competence levels of US pilots but i have seen sinilar types of comments on various flight school websites across the UK.
Taking into account all the information available, I am staying local