Half the price yes, but -
- a number of days spent pushing paper around for Visa and TSA
- a day spent at the US Embassy in London, plus travel
- a day spent at Flight Safety in Farnborough getting fingerprinted, plus travel
- a day spent somewhere (probably Norwich) to sit the FAA PPL written exam, cost £200+, plus travel
- various expenses, e.g. $130 to TSA, a possible $250 for an I-20, etc etc
- airline flights to USA
- living in the USA for a month
- eating there (instead of getting your mum to feed you
) - bear in mind that most U.S. food is absolute sh1t and if you eat what is obviously on offer you will put on 2st in a month, so self catering is a must
- laundry (instead of getting your mum to do it
)
I've done this (for the IR, for very good reasons to do with legal UK regulatory issues) but I reckon that if somebody did in the UK what they would do in the USA, i.e. take a solid month out of their life and live in a B&B next to a half decent UK flying school, they would knock off a PPL here in a month too. It would still cost more but the margin is so thin few would bother.
Subject to weather of course and that is the crunch!