Time To Fly
The school I was going to was Britannia in winter haven, however it's foreign training operation closes at the end of October as a result of the changes to the rules, so you won't be able to go there anyway.
To be honest I don't believe they were intentionally misleading me, there are three reasons for this:
Firstly their advice was based on information from the US State Dept. website, which semed to say that if you were undertaking recreational training (I was just going for a PPL) for less than a certain number of hours a week you didn't need a visa. (When I got back I checked and the website did indeed say this, with no caveat about flight training or whatever).
Secondly, the partner that I was dealing with offered to pay a contribution towards my training with another school (he reccommended Naples) out of his own pocket.
Thirdly, as I said at the top of this post they are voluntarily closing down their operation, rather than doing as some other schools seem to be doing (based on posts within this thread) which is to try and circumvent the INS rules.
They would also seem to be held in very high regard by the training fraternity over there and here as can be seen by the responses to their announcment on PPRUNE and gonewests message which he must have been typing at the same time I typed mine
