Philippines Investigation Bureau finds collusion between flying schools, ATO officials

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has found strong evidence of collusion between flying-school authorities and some officials of the former Air Transportation Office (ATO) who issued fraudulent pilots licenses and fabricated certificates signed with the forged signatures of former Air Transportation assistant secretaries without actually taking the written examinations.
Some examinees may have taken only a few of the five test subjects but were eventually made to appear that they hurdled all the tests, then applied or received commercial pilot certificates from the school where they enrolled.
To expedite the long hours of flying needed to qualify before taking the examinations, some student pilots, with the tacit approval of their schools, padded their flying hours by logging flights that were not actually flown.
These were among the findings that the NBI reported to Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (Caap) Director General Alfonso Cusi.
Cusi has appointed Capt. Raul Trinidad, a former Philippine Airlines Boeing 747 captain, as lead investigator, coordinating closely with the NBI to flush out the members of the syndicates and hale them to court.
Trinidad says the criminal syndicates usually make arrangement with some flying schools to agree on a package deal where the examination results and certificates would be delivered for a fee of between $30,000 and $50,000, depending on the student’s degree of achievement.
A similar flying school at Clark Field in Pampanga charges P2 million, guaranteeing that the applicant would graduate within two years and be qualified as an Airbus 320 pilot, Trinidad said.
Most of the victims are Indian students.
There are some of them—willing and unwilling victims—from India, who said they enrolled in the Philippines because of the proficiency of Filipinos in English, aside from the reasonable tuition.
Another Indian student, who will remain anonymous, find out to his surprise that he has a bogus certificate when he applied to become a commercial pilot.
Trinidad says the student went to seek the help of the Indian Embassy, who coordinated with the Caap to try to clear the issue.
That was when Cusi discovered the anomalous procedures at the Caap licensing section, forcing him to seek NBI help.
06/07/10 Recto Mercene/Business Mirror, Philippines