EMBROKE PINES, Fla., Sept. 13 — Terry Fensome thought
his flight school's fortunes had hit bottom in November 2001 when one of
his planes was intercepted by fighter pilots who thought they were foiling
a terrorist attack on Orlando.
But the acute embarrassment of that incident — the student was forced
to land, questioned and released — was nothing compared with the economic
misery that has dogged the Pelican Flight Training Center since then, a
result of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Mr. Fensome's school is one of
dozens in Florida that have struggled mightily in the last two years,
beset by collapsing enrollment, security-related red tape and the stigma
of being linked to the 9/11 hijackers, several of whom learned to fly in
Florida.
"We never recovered," said Mr. Fensome, whose school has 30 students
now, down from 60 before the attacks, though none of the hijackers trained
at Pelican. "The idea that the flight schools were to blame for this was
totally off the wall, and it hurt us a lot."
At least 50 of the state's flight schools have closed since 9/11, most
of them mom-and-pop operations that could not survive the drop in business
and rising costs. The number of foreign students has plummeted, flight
school owners say, because of tough new immigration rules, the battered
aviation industry and a general fear of bias since 9/11.
It is a striking reversal for the flight schools. With its warm
weather, abundance of airfields and good flying conditions, Florida has
long drawn student pilots from the United States and abroad.
The state had at least 220 of about 2,000 flight schools in the country
in 2001, and trained about 20 percent of all pilots in the world, the
Florida Department of Transportation said.
About half of the state's student pilots were foreigners drawn by the
stature and lower costs of flight school in this country, flight school
owners said.
Shortly after 9/11, Congress passed a law requiring extensive
background checks for all foreigners learning to fly planes heavier than
12,500 pounds, which is about the size of a 10-seat jet. Since the checks
can take months, many student pilots have opted to train in South Africa
or Australia, which have a lot of flight academies and less oversight,
flight school owners said.
In addition, American flight schools must now be certified by the
Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the State Department keeps a
close eye on all foreign flight students. Even applicants to schools for
flying small planes, like Mr. Fensome's, must undergo background checks,
though they are not as extensive as those for students at the schools for
the pilots of jetliners. Only a few Florida flight schools train pilots
for larger planes, and since the schools are bigger, they have generally
not taken the financial hits of the smaller ones.
Marilyn Ladner, a vice president of Pan American International Flight
Academy in Miami, said her school and others that offer advanced training
had lost a lot of foreign students since the attacks because of the
requirement for background checks. But Ms. Ladner said most of her revenue
loss was due to the poor economy and because the airlines were not
hiring.
Arne Kruithof, who owns Florida Flight Training Center in Venice, where
one 9/11 hijacker learned to fly, said he had only a handful of students a
year ago and his business was then barely surviving. Now, he said, he has
40 students and business is getting back to normal.
Mr. Kruithof, who has taken out loans to aggressively advertise his
school in Europe, said, "Everything started recovering last winter, then
when the news came that we were going to attack Iraq, we lost all our
business again."
Mr. Kruithof's school trained Ziad al-Jarrah, one of the men who
hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a field in
Pennsylvania. A neighboring flight school,
Huffman Aviation, trained Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, identified as
leaders of the hijackings. The school's owner, Rudi Dekkers, sold his
struggling business last winter.
Mr. Kruithof said a favorable exchange rate began drawing Europeans
back to American flight schools in late spring. But like other flight
school owners, he said no Middle Easterners had enrolled.
He said he had contacted the families of some former Middle Eastern
students to ask why, and said they had told him the reason was part anger,
part fear. "They said we could credit it to a general boycott against
everything American," Mr. Kruithof said.
Their fear is warranted, other flight school operators said, because of
what several called the continuing suspicions of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and local law enforcement authorities. An example was the
interception of Mr. Fensmore's student, a 24-year-old Angolan, after
someone heard a radio transmission that supposedly threatened an attack on
Orlando International Airport.
"Can you imagine one of these little things taking out Disney World?"
Mr. Fensmore said, pointing to one of his two-seat Katana DA-20's at North
Perry Airport, where his company has trained pilots for 18 years. "My
student was scared out of his wits."
More recently, someone called the F.B.I. to report that a plane owned
by Trade Winds International Flight School in Fort Pierce had circled a
nuclear power plant on Hutchison Island, off Florida's Atlantic coast.
"I got a call from Miami air traffic control, and the next thing I knew
the F.B.I. showed up at my door," Ernie Carnahan, president of Trade
Winds, said. "They asked what color my plane was, apologized and said it
was a case of mistaken identity. But it shows you they are still watching
close."
Mr. Kruithof even saw a bright side. Federal agencies immediately
answer phone calls and e-mail messages from flight schools these days, he
said, while in the past such inquiries often fell through the cracks.
The government has also updated the application forms for foreigners
seeking visas for flight instruction, Mr. Kruithof said, replacing forms
that he said were so outdated they asked if the applicant had ties to the
Third Reich.
Still, with student pilots restricted from flying over Walt Disney
World and other potential terrorist targets, some student pilots are
nervous, fearing they could unintentionally violate a rule and wind up in
jail.
"There's always going to be that feeling that you're doing something
wrong," Brett Montgomery, 19, who is training at Pelican, said.
Mr. Fensome was bristling because a visit by President Bush on Tuesday
to Fort Lauderdale, about 10 miles north of Pembroke Pines, had shut down
all flight schools in the area for the day.
"Every time they bring the president or another government official
down they close the flight schools and we lose business," Mr. Fensome
said, adding that he could not recall any such shutdowns before 9/11.
"This knee-jerk stuff is toning down now, but it's never going to go away
completely."
While the security crackdown is a nuisance, rising insurance premiums
are a far more serious threat to flight schools, Mr. Fensome and others
said. Mr. Fensome has grounded 5 of his 15 airplanes to reduce insurance
costs, but he still pays $10,000 a month, he said. Mr. Kruithof said his
insurance costs have risen by 55 percent since the attacks.
Many flight school operators say they believe business will fully
recover over the next five years, as the economy improves, baby-boomer
airline pilots start retiring and the aviation industry starts hiring
again.
Until then, Mr. Fensome said he would be content with things as they
were one day this week, as he watched four of his little planes scuttle
out to the runway. "Four of them," he said, leaning forward to watch the
first plane take off. "That's a blessing."
