Gidday Harrier
Looks like you've been listening to a good old fashioned Ardmore Flying School marketing spiel for a bit long, to be honest.
I would strongly NOT recommend going to ANY flying school based at Ardmore for the following reasons :
1. The weather is NOT good all year round, it's exposed to New Zealand's predominantly westerly low pressure systems, sure there are worse places but if it's maximum flying hours with minimum bad weather days you want, then you'll get much better at places like nelson/motueka, christchurch, gisborne, hastings or tauranga to name a few.
2. The Auckland International CTR is indeed just to the northwest, but that's as much as you'll get to see of it. There is a big designated 'uncontrolled training area' cut out of the Auckland TMA to the south and that's where you spend all your time. You probably will not even speak to Auckland ATC until you get up to the advanced CPL flying / instrument rating phase. Truth is, there's little or no commercial activity at Ardmore, you won't see a single airline turboprop let alone jet aircraft, it's a pure training airport and the biggest thing you're likely to share the circuit with is a dozen C172s.
which leads me into my main gripe ...
3. The place is MENTALLY busy. Until recently it was the busiest airfield in the southern hemisphere in terms of aircraft movements, it's the norm to have 6 or 8 other aircraft in the circuit and it's not uncommon to have a dozen. And on the bad days ... sheesh ... on my 2nd solo flight, back in the days when it had ATC I was "downwind #13", (with a few others behind me, freaked me RIGHT out), and the old chief controller told me at his retirement party that the all time record was 28 in the circuit with another dozen holding for joining / departure
Add to the mix, a lot of asian cadet pilots with minimal english language skills, warbirds and weekend warrior pilots all making non standard RT calls, uncontrolled airport ops and LONG LONG queues at the departure runway holding point and you can see there's a lot of potential for tempers rising and money being wasted.
(Bankstown airport in Sydney is now officially 'more' busy but they've got ATC and parallel runway ops).
3. Cheap living costs - nope wrong once again - Auckland house rental is twice the price of the rest of the country, sort of like London vs the rest of Britain I guess. South Auckland is a DUMP to live in as well, it is the Brixton of the Pacific
Sure all of NZ is cheap by UK standards but you'll definitely be able to squeeze another few flying hours out of the rent money if you go live in a regional town instead.
Lastly, I have deliberately avoided discussing the company politics of the actual flying school in question, but I STRONGLY advise you to do your homework, maybe find a past employee of that school and have a quiet chat with them before you part with your money
If I was you I would look around the country at one of the regional airports, with a better mix of traffic and none of Ardmore's unique issues, there are excellent schools all around, look at tauranga & queenstown for starters would be my advice, or any of those towns I mentioned previously.
In terms of licence conversion to JAA from NZ, it's the same as any other commonwealth country, expect on your return to sit all the JAA ATPL writtens, the CPL and IR flight tests, the whole conversion should cost around 6 to 8 thousand quid to end up with a frozen JAA ATPL.
Don't forget to search the 'dununda general aviation' forum, & feel free to pm me if you want to be on the receiving end of any more rants or if I can be of any help generally