Thanks Craggenmore, I stand corrected! I hadn't heard about the initial ME/IR part now being done in the US.
It makes sense financially, but I'm not sure it's good for the students. IR flying is quite different from US to UK (OCA concept, RT, etc). I had 15 hours back in the UK (modular), after having flown 270 hours exclusively in the US, and it was a bit of a challenge...
The main bit they'll have to get right is standards. At Scottsdale, most of the instructors were FAA and I got told off endlessly by the UK FIs when I started flying back at Oxford! Hopefully the new ME/IR FIs at Goodyear will be JAA and trained by OAT.
P