CAA: GA News, "Flight schools trying to cope after attacks"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thursday, September 27, 2001

Flight schools trying to cope after attacks 
Impact felt financially, emotionally 
By Guy Tridgell
The Daily Southtown - Chicago (IL)


Sept. 11, 2001, will mark the day when the aviation industry was turned
against itself. 

Former international student pilots, trained at domestic flight schools,
used the skills they acquired to turn hijacked commercial jetliners into
weapons of mass destruction. 

The attacks were especially chilling for flight instructors, who became
unwitting partners and forever linked with perhaps the worst tragedy in
American history. The aftershocks still are being felt emotionally and
economically by many area instructors who have sent dozens of students
into long careers as commercial pilots.

"I went into denial," said Johnnie O'Toole, owner of ISO Aeronautics
Institute at Midway Airport. "Not everybody has the tenacity to be a
pilot. All the studying and studying, then you take all the information
you learned to run an airplane into a brick wall? It's stupidity.

"I could see a rocket or a missile. But an airplane? No way."

The responses to the terrorism from the federal government have hit
especially hard. 

Within hours after the Tuesday morning attacks, FBI agents shut down all
flight schools and started to gather student records throughout the
nation.

And the Federal Aviation Administration has basically grounded pilot
testing locally with a partial ban on air space within 25 nautical miles
of O'Hare International Airport.

The limits have quieted the smaller airports that are home to many
flight schools, said Chris Lawson, director of aviation for the Joliet
Regional Port District, which manages the Lewis University Airport in
Romeoville. Even an experienced pilot like Lawson cannot fly without an
instructor and a detailed flight plan with him.

"I want to be flying," Lawson said. "There are a lot of people out here
drinking coffee and being mad about it."

Pilots and instructors are understanding about the emergency rules. But
the security measures have been financially crippling, said Parker
Catlow, owner of Midway Flight Training, a small pilot school at Midway.


While federation authorities look for permanent ways to toughen security
measures, there are no students to teach. That means no tuition being
paid to schools.

"This pretty much put everybody way back," Catlow said. "We got
ourselves into a situation where we cannot make the money we need, and
the bills are coming at the end of the month."

The letdown follows boom years, when the airline industry enjoyed record
growth. The demand for pilots increased along with it. Last year, the
airlines hired a record number of pilots, according to Flying Magazine.

Helping to meet the demand were international students who flocked to
American aviation schools because of cheaper prices. 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. In the United States, where fuel
and the cost of living is cheaper, a comparative license is $20,000 to
$30,000.

Now the schools that produced those pilots are frightened for their
futures. 

One flight school owner contacted for this story declined to comment,
fearing more publicity would damage his business even more. 

"Right now, we are bleeding," the owner said. "I have got my own little
world, and I am trying to stay afloat."

Officials with the aviation school at Lewis University, where an
out-of-service United Airlines jet was donated two years ago so students
could get a feel for working a cockpit, also declined to comment.

Some instructors said there has been a psychological toll. 

Realistic flight simulators that cost thousands of dollars can no longer
be viewed as innocent teaching tools. 

Instructors also are left to wonder about international students who
passed through their schools without a second look. Will they have the
time and the money to check the background of every prospective student,
including those who come from faraway countries?

O'Toole worries that flight instructors will be forced to become
teachers, policemen and immigration agents. 

"All I can worry about is if I have trained them enough," O'Toole said.
"I can't read their minds." 

No one can. Sept. 11 proved that.

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