CAA: GA News, "Attacks expose flaws in flight training"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sunday, October 28, 2001

Attacks expose flaws in flight training 
Officials call for tougher restrictions on pilot training
By Curtis Morgan and Peter Wallsten 
The Tallahassee (FL) Democrat


MIAMI - In the past, enrolling in a flying school was nearly as easy as
getting a driver's license. In the future, buying a gun may seem as easy
in comparison.

The investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has exposed
immigration law loopholes and loose flight-training practices that at
least four suspected hijackers exploited in schools from Florida to
California. The revelations have stirred calls for tougher restrictions
on pilot training, from criminal background checks to tighter tracking
of foreign fliers.

"It's fair to say that flight schools, security, everything is being
re-evaluated," said Christopher White, a spokesman for the Federal
Aviation Administration, which regulates the nation's 478 large flight
schools and hundreds more centers and freelance instructors.

It could take bureaucratic and business overhauls to resolve the
security concerns.

Oversight of flight schools has been minimal and fragmented because it
is splintered among three federal agencies. Visa laws for foreign
nationals are so ambiguous that the two agencies that screen those
students, the U.S. State Department and the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, don't even agree on what they mean.

The confusion clouds a critical question: whether some flight schools
routinely violate the law by instructing foreigners without proper
visas. 

Flight schools get defensive 

While horrified about the attacks, flight schools defend their
operations and wonder how private businesses can be expected to sniff
out infiltrators if the government can't.

"I don't have the obligation to ask for someone's passport when they
walk through the door," said Rudi Dekkers, owner of Huffman Aviation
International in Venice, where reputed hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan
Al-Shehhi honed their skills. "I'm not Customs. I'm not the INS. I'm not
the FBI."

Though far from complete, the investigation into the hijackings has
connected at least four men to schools in Florida, Arizona and
California. Investigators think the four were among the pilots who
crashed four jets into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a
Pennsylvania field.

Atta and Al-Shehhi, considered key conspirators, trained last year at
two southwest Florida schools, Jones Aviation Flying Service in Sarasota
and Huffman in Venice, though they held tourist visas instead of the
vocational visas that federal law dictates for flying students.

Largely unreported is that a third suspect, Ziad Jarrah, also admitted
on a tourist visa, listed as his destination the address of another
Venice school, Florida Flight Training School. Owner Arne Kruithof did
not return calls but told Netherlands public radio his school trained
Jarrah.

A fourth, Hani Hanjour, arrived on an academic student visa to learn
English in California. He never showed up, and investigators say he
later trained at an Arizona school.

Stolen identifications have clouded the investigation, but there are
possible links to other schools nationwide, including some of Florida's
most established and respected centers, Flight Safety International in
Vero Beach and Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach.

Gov. Jeb Bush has defended the schools as victims of fanatics.

Other leaders, prominent among them U.S. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida,
have said they are troubled by how foreign suicide pilots trained in the
United States without raising warning flags, particularly since
intelligence agencies knew other suspects with ties to alleged
mastermind Osama bin Laden had studied flying in the United States since
the early 1990s.

The FBI declined to discuss the information, which comes from several
sources, including testimony of bin Laden operatives convicted this year
of bombing U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

"If we talk about the past, we might talk about investigative techniques
and sources," said an FBI spokeswoman in Washington. "We can't afford
it. We can't take the risk." 

Legislative rumblings 

Graham, a Miami Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee,
has directed his staff to investigate why student pilots aren't
screened, at the least going through the same criminal check as gun
buyers.

Florida Rep. Stacy Ritter is drafting a bill that would require all
prospective pilots to undergo FBI checks, complete with fingerprints.

While any changes would likely affect all the approximately 70,000
people who take flight training each year at virtually every airport and
airfield around the country, most questions center on the admission of
international students.

For years, before airplanes were shockingly redefined as potential
weapons of mass destruction, the system was streamlined to open cockpit
doors for foreign students and bolster business for what has become an
increasingly lucrative segment of the industry.

Many schools court foreign students with Internet ads or overseas
recruiters. Larger schools are even prescreened by the INS, in a review
mainly focused on a company's financial stability, to issue visa
applications that prospective students can present to State Department
consulates for approval. School admission eases entry into the United
States. 

'It's still a free country' 

Foreign students have flocked to the United States, with 123,361 foreign
nationals now holding FAA certifications ranging from airline pilots to
mechanics. More than 4,000 foreign nationals have FAA student pilot
certificates, but only a small percentage of those are from the Middle
East.

Industry standards for admission vary widely, and some flight schools,
at least in the view of the State Department, regularly cross the legal
line.

One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the department
thinks none of the hijackers should have been allowed to train.

While all four were legally admitted, none held the "M" visa typically
issued for vocational training such as in flight schools. Atta,
Al-Shehhi and Jarrah had been granted "B" visas, which allow tourism and
business travel. Hanjour had an "F" visa, one given to academic
students.

"This is where I have my beef with flight schools," the official said.
"U.S. flight schools that enrolled these individuals who were here on
tourist visas, who had never sought a change of status from INS, they
were breaking the law."

Some flight schools, Embry Riddle for one, accept only students cleared
by the State Department with visas specifically allowing aviation
training.

Others say nothing requires them to treat foreign nationals any
different from U.S. citizens.

"Anybody that shows up, you can give them a lesson," said Gary Jones,
vice president of Jones Aviation in Sarasota, where Atta and Al-Shehhi
took basic training before moving south to Huffman. "It's still a free
country."

Jones said his school doesn't have INS clearance to train vocational
students, though he has had the application in "for years," but that
doesn't bar him from teaching other visitors with tourist visas.

The INS and FAA, contradicting the agency that actually issues the
visas, agree with Jones and other operators.

In fact, the FAA, which has the broadest role in regulating flights
schools, makes virtually no distinction between foreign and U.S.
students and doesn't require schools to, either.

There is an eligibility requirement "to read, speak, write and
understand English," but only because that's the universal language of
aviation. Schools have to ensure only that student pilots are at least
16 and pass a medical examination. The sole background check comes into
play when a student obtains a private or commercial license, and that
one is largely self-reporting. Pilots must file a form with the FAA
listing any criminal or drug past.

No fingerprints are required, but many companies do run checks on their
own, said FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen. The issue of screening and
monitoring foreign students, she said, is left entirely to the State
Department and the INS.

The INS, which is supposed to enforce visa violations, said visa
restrictions on flight training are vague. With tourist visas, for
instance, the only prohibition is employment. 

Regulations cause confusion 

"It's not the schools' responsibility," said Eyleen Schmidt, an INS
spokeswoman in Washington. "It's an immigration determination as to
whether they're violating the visa. The regulations allow for training
that is incidental to one's visa."

The schools aren't required to report foreign students or tourists, she
said, though they are asked to certify lists the INS sends them of "M"
students who enter the country.

"There is a program that has been in the works for several years that
would eventually have a reporting element to it, but it's not in place
yet," she said.

Ira Kurzban, a Miami attorney and noted authority on immigration laws,
said the confusion among agencies underlines broader problems. The
restrictions outlined in visas consist of what amounts to an honor code,
relying on the honesty of visitors who can move with impunity in a free
society.

A tourist, for instance, who decides to study flying is supposed to
request a change in status from the INS. But the agency lacks even a
rudimentary method of tracking the millions of people it admits.

"A lot of this does fall back on the alien to do the right thing,"
Kurzban said. "What happens if the alien doesn't do the right thing? Who
is checking? Nobody."

Terry Fensome, who owns Pelican Airways, a flight school at the North
Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines, said some school operators clearly
understand the loopholes and commonly offer students advice on how to
use them.

Can't get a coveted "M" visa? Then apply to an English-language school
and study flying on the side. Fensome doesn't do it but said others do. 

Rubber-stamp process 

"There are schools that will say yes if someone shows up and says,
'Here's 10,000 bucks; train me,' " Fensome said.
But he and others said the burden of plugging national security holes
shouldn't be shifted to flight schools.

"It's a knee-jerk reaction," Fensome said. "The whole problem isn't
where they go to school. The whole problem is how do they get in and out
of the country."

Some flight-school operators liken the process to a rubber stamp.
Schools told The New York Times the INS lags as much as a year behind in
informing them about student arrivals.

The agencies admit present screening processes could be improved but
said they do the best they can with swamped staff and inadequate
resources. The State Department, for instance, rejects about one in five
student visa applications after a screening process that involves a
background check and usually an interview.

"That's hardly, to me, sort of closing your eyes and letting everyone
in," the State Department official said.

Every name, the official said, is run through a database of 5 million to
6 million red-flagged names derived from intelligence and other sources.
But even that has significant gaps, he said.

The FBI's criminal database isn't included nor are most reports of
stolen passports. Even if they were, the system might not have stopped
four suicide pilots from entering the country. But strict adherence to
visa restrictions, he said, might have stopped them from learning to
fly.

"Our database is only as good as the information that has been entered
into it," the official said. "There may be information out there that we
don't know about."

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