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Many people wonder why the FBI and other Law Enforcement Agencies didn't notice that there were so many Middle Eastern Flight Students in the US in the late Nineties. Actually, flight schools in the US were literally flooded with foreign students throughout the Nineties. In the late eighties I trained with Norwegians, Brits, and South Africans in Macon, GA. In the early Nineties I traveled extensively throughout the US and visited many flight schools in my job search. Many flight instructors, if not most, at that time were foreign nationals who had completed their Flight Instructor ratings and were building flight time in order to qualify for airline jobs. The picture below shows four of my flight students at Levelland Aviation in Levelland, TX. The student on the far right is my late, close friend, Rick Bond from Lockport, NY. The three students to the left are all from Pakistan and I was training them in Private, Commercial, and Instrument ratings. Faisal, the most promising pilot among the Pakistanis was caught cheating on an FAA Examination and was deported. Badr and Salmon successfully completed their Private Pilot ratings but I left the school right after that and I don't know if they completed their professional pilot courses. During the time I was there, I became acquainted with many Saudis, North Africans, and other Middle Easterners as well.
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