MusDg

So the flight school that I was chief instructor for mysteriously burned to the ground 2 weeks after I was terminated. Thank goodness I was in DC when that happened or I'm sure I would have gotten blamed for that. That is we're the questions come in to play though.

Here is what I know. The flight school was part 141 and contracted to a college to provide training. The flight school for whatever reason lost there 141 certification after the fire. Now there are about 50+ students out there who were near complete with their training at this 141 school.

I've been getting a lot of phone calls from the students as to what they can do. There are regulations about how much training can be credited from 141 to 141. If you go 61 this means more flights hours that probably weren't budgeted for because they where 141.

Especially the commercial students. One in mind was 12 hours from completing the 141 syllabus. Now to finish 141 elsewhere they would get partial credit for their flight time or need an additional 62 hours to reach the mins for a commercial 61 checkride.

There were multiple students ready for their private checkrides. This was the only flight school for 100's of miles offering training in Diamomd aircraft. Even for them to finish 61 now they'll most likely be faced with an additional 10 hours of training. Five more to get up to speed in a Cessna or Piper and the additional 5 hours of solo time they'll need 61 vs 141.

I don't even want to get into the poor instruments students. So many more requirements to go 61 than 141. Atleast for them if they transfer 141 to 141 they should get up to 17.5 hours credit. Which is only half of what they need to complete.

Some have called the FSDO which has replied there is nothing they can do. Does anyone have any experience with a 141 flight school disappearing and how the students finished? This can't be the first case. Especially in tornado alley or along the coast lines due to hurricanes.

Some of the students are looking for legal advise as well. They picked a flight school that was contracted by their college to provide 141 training. They no longer provide it but are still going to be doing services for the college.

Is the college or the flight school perhaps blinded somehow to make up the difference in extra hours?

Should the FSDO be able to setup some type of waiver for the students to transfer to the other college contracted flight school with 100% credit? They all ready have one in place for the flight schools to accept 100% credit of the college's ground school.

Do you think there is anything that can be done to help these students out is is it just the way the cookie crumbled for this folks?

MusDg

I called the POI and he said it wasn't because of the fire that they lost their 141 certificate. We kinda all figured that. It is simply that they need to submit a revision to the TCO to update their address and description of their facilities. The part that burns me up is they keep telling the students they are working with the college to get their 141 back up and running. That's great but they haven't talked to the FAA once. So there sits dozens of students who are faced with tough questions of how and where to spend their money to finish training.

rickair7777

Legally and practically, the FAA has NO responsibility or interest, actual or implied, in helping students who are inconvenienced or ripped off when fly-by-night schools go out of business. It happens all the time, and the only remedy is to do due diligence and avoid these operations in the first place.

It is highly unlikely that either the school or the college would be stupid enough to obligate themselves to provide ratings within a fixed number of hours although it might worth having an aviation attorney take a look at the contract...they might be able to read some implied guarantee into it. If there are enough "victims" involved it might be worth a lawyer's while to delve into the situation...usually the school goes BK so there's little chance of recovery there, but with the college there's another possible set of pockets.


There is no precedent or existing FAR mechanism for this, it might actually require an act of congress. Not going to happen, the FAA gains nothing by going out on a limb like that...they are not here to do that sort of thing.

Most likely nothing.

MusDg

Exactly all my thoughts. The FAA does care about the situation up here but has no interest in doing anything beyond what is in the FAR.

The college is obligated by the state to provide 141 flight training. There is a 40% match on airplane rental through the state. Through a contract the training must be at a college approved flight school. The contract for the flight school states they must provide 141 training to the college students. The only why around/out of it is if the student fails the same test twice in ground school. Then they are switched to 61.

I don't know why the FAA went out on a limb in the late 70's to set up the ground school could be transferred 100% between the flights schools and the college. The new crew at the FSDO and myself when I was chief brought this question of how up many times. We were in the process of fixing it. Then I was terminated.

It's questions that have been coming up.

MusDg

Thanks for your inputs.

rickair7777

That can easily be legal. Basically the college instructor is under the 141 certificate...the instructor is just paid by someone else and works in a different building.

I can and have taught freelance groundschool in the evenings for 141 students, I just need to be documented as an instructor at the 141 school. The students wanted to do class at night and the staff CFI's wanted to go home at night.

MusDg

That is correct. Here is the twist in this situation. Everyone has their own 141 certificate. College provides ground training under their own 141 cert. Contracted flight schools provide flight training and additional ground training under their own 141 cert. College gives student a letter stating they have completed the 141 ground school at the college. Student then gives letter to the flight school. Flight school gives credit for 100% of the ground training received at the college by adding the letter to the student record and adding a generic endorsement to each ground lesson in the student's syllabus. This all takes place under completely separate 141 certs. It wouldn't be as bad if it were Jeppesen for Jeppesen or Sportys for Sportys, etc. Everyone is using something different. College uses Jeppesen, one flight school uses Sportys, while the other uses Gleim. So when a flight school adds that generic endorsement that ground lesson 1 was completed at the college, was it? I'm sure the material was covered but did the college's lesson 1 actually reflect the flight school's lesson 1? None of the college ground instructors are on the flight schools' 141 certificates or the flight schools' instructors on the college's 141 certificate. It's a sticky mess at this place.

Is offline

Silver state helicopter was almost the same situation. The student and instructors showed up one day to chained doors. The owner told them tough luck and they had lost their money but if the school accepts title 4 funds they have to pay for the student to finish elsewhere or give the money back they have spent.