8 months for a PPL!?!? If 89 days is a new record at that school, STAY AWAY from that place! Sadly, there are quite a few scams in flight training out there, especially since the US schools train so many foreigners.

For just the PPL like she earned, 2-3 months is pretty common, but some schools offer 14 & 30 day courses. I don't know that I'd trust someone who got it in 14 days though -- you might be able to pass a check-ride, but at that point they're teaching the test and not aviation. There's only so much a person can learn in a day, and cramming like that doesn't produce good long-term memories. Most students go on their first solo flight in ~8-15 flight hours, get their PPL within 40-65 flight hours. ATP Flight Schools will take you from zero to hero (absolutely no experience to Airline Transport Pilot) in 9* months. This guy picked up all of the advanced ratings in 5 weeks: https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comm...write_up_from/

I'll be done with my PPL by year-end, possibly before Thanksgiving, and that's a rather leisurely pace to me. If I dedicated my life 100% to it, I could see getting it in a month or just a little over. I'm still working 50-60 hours a week outside of my flying pursuits and traveling for work. For now I have all of my flights scheduled in the mornings, with "night" flights w being performed at zero-dark-thirty, so I'll be fresh & alert. There's no reason the "ground" lessons can't happen over breakfast at a fly-in restaurant.

*You'll have the training needed for your ATP at that point, but due to the Colgan Air crash the FAA changed the number of flight hours required for ATP from 250 to 1500. Both pilots in the Colgan Air crash had well over 1500 hrs, so not sure what the FAA was trying to accomplish here. The AF447 captain had 11,000 hrs, FO had 6,000, and they still failed to recognize a stall.