Aviation India: Careers

Deland: Students at a new flight school have filed complaints about the prospect of losing thousands of dollars in tuition after the school cut back on its operations, the state attorney general's office said Wednesday.
However, Elia Golfin, owner of the Asia-USA flight school at DeLand Municipal Airport, has denied the school has gone out of business or left any of its 23 students without the training they paid for. He claimed the school is in the midst of moving some of its operations to the New Smyrna Beach Airport, but officials there said they have not leased any space to Golfin.
(The whole content of the school's website is mysteriously replaced by these sentences this week: "AsiaUSA is currently under construction.We appologize for the inconvenience. Please check back later." Here is the Google's cache of the site's home page as retrieved on 20 Jun 2008 16:51:47 GMT.- Editor, AvIndia).
WFTV in Orlando reported Tuesday a dozen students were fearful they could lose $30,000 or more apiece because the flight school appeared to have closed suddenly. Nick Landgraf, manager of DeLand airport, said the school had not officially closed but was about two to three months overdue on its rent for two buildings. He said he had seen little activity at the school for the past week or two, and its four leased training planes were gone. He said the school has been operating at DeLand for less than six months.
Golfin, who acknowledged most of his students come from India, said two or three students apparently were unhappy with the school's refund policy and had launched "vicious attacks" against the school.
Sandi Copes, spokeswoman for the attorney general's office, said the office had received two complaints from Asia-USA students but did not plan to investigate them. Instead, it was sending them on to the state Division of Consumer Services.
Terry McElroy, spokesman for the consumer division, said no paperwork had been received from the attorney general's office yet but such referrals often take two or three days. He said the division has no regulatory authority over flight schools but it could try to mediate the dispute.
Golfin said he has not cheated anyone. "The students are free to hire a lawyer and sue me," he said.
Asia-USA lacks a federal certificate for giving flight instruction to foreigners, said Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration. Golfin said he has a partnership with Angley College that allows him to provide the training to aliens under the college's name.
Fred DeWitt, a spokesman for Angley and a former flight school operator, said Angley has no agreement with Asia-USA.
26/06/08 Thomas S. Brown/Daytona Beach News-Journal, USA