Flying Angels Come Forward to Help Stranded Students

Hayward: As many as 50 former students of the failed American School of Aviation have retained a lawyer who is now gathering information in pursuit of a lawsuit against the school.
And at least three local flight schools are now coming forward to help the students since reading of their plight in India-West and other news outlets.
The help is welcome good news for the young men and women, most in their early 20s, who saw their families’ fortunes disappear when they were unceremoniously dumped by a flight school that had promised them a path to high-flying careers.
Of the approximately 100 students left stranded by the closing of ASA, more than half have chosen to remain in California to continue their flight training; the rest have gone back to India.
Several flight schools have come forward to offer assistance to the students since reading news reports of their unfortunate situation.
Hiren Jetha, the owner of flight schools in Van Nuys, Calif., and Houston, Texas, offered aid after reading about the students in India-West.
Between 30 and 40 former ASA students are now studying at Flying Vikings, Inc., a school operating out of the Hayward Executive Airport in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area.“With the heightened price of fuel, we can’t give a discount,” the school’s chief financial officer, Celine Correa, told India-West. “But we are letting the students pay in small installments, which ASA refused to do.”
Flying Vikings is owned by Joe Correa, originally from Goa; his wife, Celine, and son-in-law, pilot Mats Salomonsson, also run the school with him. The current crop of new students is not the first batch of disillusioned ASA students to seek out Flying Vikings, said Celine Correa — 10 former ASA students came to study at Flying Vikings as far back as July 2007 and they have all earned their pilots’ licenses.
California Airways, another flight school based at Hayward’s airport, has accepted 10 former ASA students.
“We are also lending our hands to our faltering brothers down in Atwater,” Jigme Bhutia, of the school’s admissions department, told India-West in an e-mail. “We are providing them with the I-20 (visa sponsorship letter) at no cost, for which we usually charge $200. My school does not accept students who are in the middle of their training course, but we have made some exceptions only for these students.”
18/07/08 Lisa Tsering/San Leandro India West, CA, USA