Hey there Trislander
I've shot my mouth off about PPL training in the USA on this forum quite enough in recent months and my views are well enough known ... but honestly mate have you never heard of the phrase 'wanting to drink champagne for beer money'?
Think about the economics of it for a second here. You say you want to go to a cheap flying school. Now given that the fixed costs of running an aircraft are more or less the same across the US training industry, why do you think it is that one flying school is cheaper than another? They can't not pay the fuel bills, or the landing fees, or the insurance - so what other costs can the bucket brigade flying schools drive down?
You guessed it, it's the staff that get the big ramrod treatment ... normally by either paying their instructors peanuts, or cramming more student flying hours per instructor into each day. Either way, you are going to be very disappointed if you think you're going to sit there and dictate that you want 'a good quality instructor that doesn't mind if you ask lots of questions' and gives you all the personalised training and attention you want, that same instructor may have all the good will in the world but he/she has probably got to fly 8 students a day just to pay the rent. In addition, most instructors in those places are people who are looking for a lot of quick hours and then sod off to the airlines, professional career minded instructors know that there's better jobs on offer in the more expensive schools. It all adds up to a big PPL sausage factory with massive staff turnover and poor standardisation, the black and white truth is that a LOT of corners are cut on training in some of these places and it shows.
I keep on saying this and I keep getting hung out to dry by angry Florida PPLs for it, but I have flown as an instructor with quite a few people who have come back from certain well known large training schools in the USA over the years, and I have honestly been appalled by some of the standards I have seen. Typical symptoms of Florida disease include poor lookout, sloppy R/T, lightning fast checklists, and total incapacity to fly the aircraft accurately in anything other than a brilliant blue day with a crystal clear horizon. Symptoms 1, 2 and 3 can all be put down to shabby instruction, symptom 4 is just a consequence of Florida weather of course, but it's still a major problem which we here in less fortunate climes have major nightmares retraining you guys for on your return.
I'm not allowed to name names because PPRuNe gets hot emails from lawyers over it these days, but most of the worst offenders are the ones that take out large glossy adverts in the back of 'Flyer' and 'Pilot' magazine advertising 'guaranteed' PPLs for unbelievably small amounts of money
Gee that school looks really cheap - I wonder where the money for all that advertising comes from?
Before I get the standard attacks launched on me in reply - this is NOT having a go at all US flying schools. Some of the best flying schools in the world are in the USA (WMU, Flightsafety etc). Unfortunately, they charge according to their reputations.