I did one of my several licences in the USA back in 2001, using a place called Britannia Flight Training at Winter Haven in Florida - the school is long defunct (and rightly so the shockingly bad way they looked after their aeroplanes), but I have maintained an FAA 61.75 so fly in the USA about every other year and I don't think that the environment has changed much.
On which basis, a few thoughts:-
- Training in the USA is by and large very professional, and in the right parts of the USA, the weather fantastic for continuity of learning.
- It seems to be increasingly difficult to find any school anywhere in the USA using anything but a C172 for its mainstream training and rental.
- In my opinion, the handful of "sausage machine" schools specialising in training foreign students are not necessarily the best place. So long as the visa can be sorted out, stick to a school primarily training Americans. If it's been in business a while, it'll be good, otherwise market forces would have closed it down.
- Go for somewhere like CA, AZ.... with consistently good weather.
- Flying in the USA is not the same as in the UK. Weather, NOTAM access, met data, VFR RT are all significantly different over here. On that basis, budget maybe 6-8 hours and a day or two of groundschool on returning to get to both consolidate learning and learn how things are done here.
- Nothing wrong in doing VFR recreational flying here on an FAA licence for a bit: at-least in the UK that is pretty pain free. But, after a couple of years and 100+ hours, it's worth converting to an EASA licence for local convenience.
- The overall process will save money, but mostly because continuity of training in the USA should get most people through a licence in near minimum hours, rather than because it's that much cheaper, particularly when a bit of extra "getting to know Europe" training is factored in.
G