Flight school Kemper gives up pilot training

Two weeks after the co-owner of Kemper Aviation and three Florida Atlantic University researchers died in a Martin County plane crash, the flight school voluntarily surrendered its certificate Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The March 13 crash was the third involving suburban Lantana-based Kemper since October; a total of eight people died in the crashes.
“The certificate was surrendered for cancellation, meaning that the certificate is now void, and that Kemper can no longer offer pilot training,” an FAA statement said. “The FAA is continuing to review the results of its February 2008 inspection.”
A call Tuesday to Kemper co-owner Akshay Mohan was not returned.

Federal investigators said Saturday in an initial report that the bird-watching flight appeared to be overloaded and flying too low and too slow when it crashed in a cow pasture near Indiantown.
This month, U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, and three other congressmen urged the FAA to ground Kemper, calling the lack of intervention “unconscionable.”
In January, The Palm Beach Post outlined concerns raised by a half-dozen current and former flight instructors who said Kemper was a hazardous place to work and learn.
The March 13 crash was the fifth since September 2006 for Kemper. According to federal data, the school had the worst safety record of any of Florida’s 66 schools for the past five years.
26/03/08 Eliot Kleinberg/Palm Beach Post, United States