Sahni, sorry I forgot to reply, but to answer your question, time frame was about 6 months to do the ATPL exams, and 6 weeks to do the flying part plus MCC. The hard part was getting a school to take me, because many of them said that they had a 3 month waiting list or something similar. It wasnīt as if I could just stroll in and start lessons that day like I am used to in the US. The CPL conversion part took me 12 days in the UK (this is during the summer, in the winter it would take much more due to weather), and they said that the IR conversion was going to take 4 weeks minimum. I found a school in Spain that did the IR conversion in two weeks.
Wellwisher,
I would not recommend doing the CPL conversion in the US, but this is just my personal recommendation. First of all, you have to go through the process of getting a Visa (think time and money), then additional cost of airfare. Additionally, there are (were) 4 JAA schools in Florida. OFT currently does not have their UK certification (last I heard). EASA/Ormond Beach... well, you can do a search on here about them. NAC, same thing, probably not as bad as EASA/Ormond Beach, but I have two friends who did a conversion at NAC thinking that they would finish quickly because of the nice Florida weather. It took them 4 weeks due to the school just being too busy and not that well run. This cost them a lot more money in hotels as well, and they definitely didnīt think that they would be there for a whole month.
Some other hidden costs with doing your JAA training in the US is ground instruction. I realized that in the US, it is standard to charge for ground instruction, aka time before and after the lesson that the instructor spends briefing. In the UK, I have never paid for briefing time on the ground, just time in the air.
So, just my opinion.