I've heard Spartan School of Aeronautics is importing a lot of students too.
Have to survive Oklahoma (Tornado Alley), but at least you don't have to worry about that massive hurricane hitting you. With a Tornado, you've got a lower chance of getting hit once it's on the ground (see and avoid). If you can see the hurricane, there's no avoiding it.
My understanding is that an FAA certificate goes a long way in Europe on conversion and I know of at least two pilots who were given the JAR coversion training by the airline when they were hired.
Well, I did mine in a summer. Technically it requires 40 hours, 45 is what they term "typical" as most don't do it in just 40, but some do. I did, although I did an additional 10 hours of dual and solo after getting my license on night cross-country procedures because neither my instructor or I were comfortable with me having a few of the procedures down so we doubled up a requirement for the next phase of my training with that to "killl two birds with one stone" and get me some additional night cross-country and meet the long cross-country requirement for the next module, so I didn't actually get "approved" by the school for PPL privaledges until I'd completed those 2 flights (6 hours and 4 hours respectively).
If you flew every day, you could do 40 hours in a couple of weeks, but I'd advise spreading it out to a 6-8 weeks if possible because that way you're not overloading yourself.
I got mine courtesy of a RN Flying Scholarship back in 1983 - and we did (I think) 35 hours in 20 days (basically a month with weekends off). You then went and did the remaining 5 to get a PPL using your own wallet instead of the taxpayers - which of course I did. So you can cram the lot into a relatively short period - and if you think about it - it's better this way than doing like an hour every Sunday for about a year as you'll only end up spending every lesson going over what you'd forgotten from the last one ...
Go for it - find out if you can still get a Flying Scholarship - great way to get a (nearly) free PPL and you don't HAVE to join up when you've got your ticket
