The security crackdown meant to keep terrorist hijackers out of U.S. flight schools has forced thousands of foreign students to train overseas, weakening the country's global dominance in aviation training, officials in the industry say.
That shift, they warn, could ultimately mean greater risks for air travelers, because U.S. flight schools are the main source of well-trained commercial pilots for foreign airlines.
"The United States has always made most of the aircraft in use around the world, we produce most of the instructors and we train most of the pilots, but now we're concerned that we may be losing that market," said Joseph E. Burnside, vice president for government and industry affairs of the National Air Transportation Association, the trade organization for the general aviation industry.
"If the government doesn't get its act together, students are going to begin training overseas, and that training will be of lesser quality than they would receive in the United States," Burnside said. "There will be an impact on aviation safety worldwide."
Government officials defend the sharpened scrutiny of foreign flight students as a long-overdue effort to rein in a sprawling, loosely regulated system that was easily exploited by the Sept. 11 hijackers, a third of whom trained at U.S. flight schools.
After the September attacks, Congress imposed new restrictions requiring background checks of many foreigners studying at flight schools here, and immigration officials tightened visa requirements. But the White House has not yet agreed to the background check procedures, and the Justice Department meanwhile is refusing to let most foreign students or pilots train to fly business jets or airliners.
As a result, according to flight schools and aviation universities around the country, thousands of foreign students who would normally be studying here are learning to fly overseas. Several international airlines have moved their training offshore. Several flight schools that catered to overseas students have closed, and most of the largest have laid off employees.
A spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, which is holding up the background checks called for in the Transportation Security Act, said the delay was the result of careful review. "We don't just rubber-stamp rules from the agencies," said the spokesman, Trent Duffy, referring to the Justice Department.
Another government official said the Justice Department was simply not ready to study the backgrounds of every foreign flight student.
In the midst of the administration's internal debate a few weeks ago, China Southern Airlines decided to train 150 of its pilots in Perth, Australia, instead of Arizona, canceling a $6 million contract with the International Airline Training Academy in Glendale, Ariz.
Jean-Marc Eloy, the school's owner, had already lost more than half of his international flight students since Sept. 11 and laid off seven instructors.
"It's killing the flight-training industry in the United States, this overreaction to Sept. 11," Eloy said. "These regulations are discouraging students from coming here, and everyone is wondering whether there's going to be even more regulation. And it's really a shame, because this is where pilots get the best training."