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Gov. Bush and a state lawmaker want the schools to rein in security. But the schools say the immigration system is the one to blame.
By BARRY KLEIN, THOMAS C. TOBIN and KATHRYN WEXLER
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 24, 2001
VENICE -- The two men told Azzan Ali they had come to Huffman Aviation, a small flight school in this beachfront retirement community, because they hoped one day to fly for private companies.
They never mentioned jets.
But they did talk about a recent trip to New York City.
"They just said they were visiting the place," remembers Ali, a classmate of Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, two of the men suspected of hijacking jetliners and crashing them into the World Trade Center.
After several months of training last year, the pair earned commercial flight ratings at Huffman. Then they left for South Florida.
Now a hot light shines on those schools and others like it for their role in honing the hijackers' flying skills. At least three Florida schools provided five of the suspects with training, investigators say. One school might even have helped a hijacker get a visa.
Until that first plane smashed into the World Trade Center, Florida's billion-dollar flight school industry was quietly enjoying another solid year. The state is home to at least 220 of the schools, a branch of the aviation business that has long catered to foreign students.
But two weeks after the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history, the schools are under fire.
Gov. Jeb Bush is talking about imposing tighter regulations. A state lawmaker is drafting a bill that would force the schools to conduct tighter security checks.
But many in the industry contend the fault lies with the U.S. immigration system.
"We don't have the wherewithal to keep these people out," says Ron Morrison, owner of the Sheffield School of Aeronautics near Fort Lauderdale.
At Phoenix East Aviation Inc. in Daytona Beach, where two of the school's partners and 25 percent of the trainees are from the Middle East, admissions director Andre Maye knows when a foreign student's visa application "smells fishy."
But when he reports such cases to the Immigration and Naturalization Service or a U.S. consulate -- in faxes with plenty of capital letters to catch their attention -- officials tell him to hold onto his records in case "something comes up."
They tell him they don't have the resources to hunt for students who abuse their visas. "I think we're going to see a massive change," Maye says.
Though little-noticed until investigators began seizing student records, Florida's flight school industry has long been among the country's largest.
The reasons are simple: The warm weather and flat terrain allow year-round flying with none of the risks posed by mountains or hills. And there are plenty of beaches and theme parks to visit during down time.
Florida's play places are a core part of the schools' marketing pitches. The Web site for Phoenix East Aviation, for example, includes a photo of an airplane on the sands of Daytona Beach.
Still, the schools' prices are the biggest attraction.
In Europe or the Middle East, a license that allows a pilot to qualify for a commercial airline job costs as much as $100,000 to earn. A comparable license in the United States costs $20,000 to $30,000, says Jim Dent, president of Aviation Employee Placement Service Inc., a Fort Lauderdale company that works with flight schools to meet the airlines' demand for pilots.
The lower cost of fuel is one reason prices are better here, Dent says. Another is the relatively cheap cost of living.
For foreigners, it's a great combination.
Last year, international students accounted for 27 percent of the state's flight school enrollment, says Andy Keith, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation's aviation office. Floridians accounted for 20 percent.
Investigators say the schools' foreign mix provided the hijackers with much-needed cover.
They already had plenty of money.
Two of the suspects wrote $10,000 checks for flying lessons at Huffman Aviation in Venice. They paid $1,500 cash for six hours inside a Boeing 727 flight simulator at SimCenter in Opa Locka, where they spent most of their time practicing turns -- not landings.
Amid the aftershocks of the attacks, many people have wondered aloud whether the combination of Middle Eastern students throwing around large amounts of cash should have sparked suspicion.
Flight school operators disagree.
"That is just racism pure and simple," says Justin Wilber, president of Suncoast Flying Services at Clearwater Executive Airpark.
He pointed to the Oklahoma City bombing: "Is Home Depot not going to sell nitrogen-based fertilizer to a 6-foot-3 white guy just because he's from Michigan?"
Owners are used to large cash payments, Wilber says. Many offer discounts to students who pay cash because it eliminates the 3 percent fee charged by credit card companies.
"It pays the bills and it puts food on a lot of people's tables," Wilber says. "(This is) a narrow-margins business."
That margin has shrunk considerably since the Sept. 11 attack. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded most small planes, which effectively shut down flight training. School owners say they are losing thousands of dollars a day.
Many fear the prospect of even more losses as officials call for restrictions that could hamper their ability to recruit foreign students.
"Is it appropriate to look at the levels of regulation for these flight schools? Yeah, I think it is," Gov. Jeb Bush said last week. "I think you'll find the flight schools themselves will re-evaluate their policies in this regard."
The controversy has engulfed the industry, from the smallest operations to the well-regarded Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, which calls itself the "Harvard of the skies" and claims to have trained more than a quarter of the commercial pilots flying in the United States.
Embry-Riddle officials expressed relief Friday when they learned that one of their graduates, thought to have been among the hijackers, was alive in Morocco.
But the government's concern goes beyond individual institutions. It is focused on a system that for decades has allowed U.S. flight schools to recruit and sponsor foreign students.
State Rep. Stacy Ritter, D-Coral Springs, is drafting a bill that would require state flight schools to conduct background checks on students through the FBI, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Though the INS might do such checks under the existing system, it clearly didn't work, said Ritter, who quickly drew support from legislators of both parties. "One department may not be enough," she said. "I don't know if these agencies even talk to each other."
The schools are not thrilled.
"It's a knee-jerk reaction," says Terry Fensome, owner of Pelican Airways, a flight school in Pembroke Pines.
Most of the suspected hijackers entered the United States on business or tourist visas. But authorities say at least one might have gotten in with a school's help.
He used an M-1, or vocational school, visa to enter the country. Most foreign students who apply for flight training in the United States submit M-1 visas.
Flight schools assist them with the paperwork. After the student pays a deposit or tuition, the school sends them a document known as a "Certificate of Eligibility."
The student takes it to a U.S. embassy or consulate in his home country, where it serves as evidence that the student has been admitted to an INS-approved school.
A face-to-face interview follows. The student must convince officials that he has the financial resources to remain in the United States until the training is complete, which usually takes a year. The student also must promise to return to his home country.
"They ask you, 'Are you a member of a terrorist organization?' " says Shariq Hasan, an Embry-Riddle student who was born in India but lives in Saudi Arabia. "No one is going to answer, 'Yes, I was a member of a terrorist organization.' But I'm sure they run checks on you without you knowing it."
Immigration officials declined to discuss the methods used to screen flight school students. Immigration lawyers say the process varies.
The nationality of a student makes a big difference, they say. But so can an official's workload on any given day.
"The problem isn't with the process. The problem is that it's very difficult to get good intelligence, which is the only way to determine who poses a threat," says Ira Kurzban, an immigration lawyer in Miami.
Another problem: Some foreign students use flight schools to get a visa, then disappear once they get to the United States, says Maye, the admissions director at Phoenix East in Daytona.
One solution would be to issue U.S. citizens an identification card, he says. Some visas allow foreigners to get Social Security numbers, then driver's licenses, both of which are used to establish the appearance that they are U.S. citizens.
As many as 13 of the suspected hijackers were able to get Florida driver's licenses and identification cards. That allowed them to rent cars and motel rooms. It also might have helped get them on board the planes they seized and crashed.
"When you think about it, Americans don't have to prove they're Americans," Maye says. "I really believe the United States is going to have to come up with a system to identify and tag you as an official citizen."
Morrison, who bought Sheffield School of Aeronautics in 1971, says he remembers a time when flight school operators acted as goodwill ambassadors. He liked that he was sending students home with good feelings about the United States.
"What we were doing," he says, "was actually good for America."
- Times staff writer Steve Bousquet and researcher John Martin contributed to this report.