Aussie college dupe Indian students pursuing aviation course

Melbourne: Indian students, aspiring to be pilots have been left in the lurch by a Sydney-based aviation college as their dreams of acquiring commercial pilot license remained unfulfilled, even after paying thousands of dollars.
This latest scam has also came to light due to the exposures by ABC TV channel programme aired yesterday.
In the expose, the channel showed migration and education agents duping Indian students of Aerospace Aviation College in Sydney that provides commercial pilot training.
With the civil aviation sector booming in India, there is a big demand for pilots in the country and thousands of students have flocked to foreign shores to get a qualified pilot license.
The programme alleged that the college exploited international students besides ill treating Indian students.
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See Also:
Attack over flying school
Indian students take aim at Australian flying school
No take off for flying school case
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Students who have signed up for a commercial pilots’ license course that cost USD 43,500, Aerospace Aviation College must deliver 200 hours of flying over 52 weeks.
Many students alleged that they did not receive enough flying hours due to lack of facilities and unavailability of instructors.
A student of the Aerospace Aviation college, Surendra Egalapati alleged he only received 130 hours over an 18 month period.
Former student Scott Alex said he was disturbed by the way the college was treating Indian students.
Interestingly, after breaking the scam on the TV programme, there were raids at the office of Indian migration agent, who according to Australian police was involved in providing fake documents to students. But there were no report of any follow up against Aerospace Aviation that is run by Australian couple Sue and Zane Davis.
The programme interviewed the mother of a student who alleged that after paying the entire fee of 43,000 Australian dollars, the college stopped imparting training and her son had to return back with an unfulfilled dream.
However, Sue Davis of the Aerospace Aviation refuted all the allegations and said: “We welcome having overseas students with us. They all bring delightful experience with them and we enjoy their time. May I add that our student of the year for the last two years has actually been a Indian students.”
28/07/09 Sudhir Kumar/SamyLive

Here is the full transcription of ‘Four Corners’ sent us by the Indian student participated in the ABC programme :

STUDENT PROTESTERS: We want justice, we want justice
WENDY CARLISLE: In late May and early June, Australians were astonished to see thousands of Indian students protesting on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney. Their complaints – muggings and bashings and police indifference.
INDIAN MAN: He got beaten by three guys.
(Indian man demonstrating wounds)
INDIAN MAN 2: In front of all the policemen. And still they are assuring that they will give us security. What kind of security?
WENDY CARLISLE: Coverage in India bordered on hysterical.
(Excerpt of footage from Indian News)
INDIAN MAN 3: My parents are calling please every half hour. Please come back. If nothing is happening, come back.
INDIAN NEWS REPORTER: So what will it take for Mr Kevin Rudd to finally wake up?
KEVIN RUDD, PRIME MINISTER: Our Indian community has been such a vital contributor to our culture, to our life, to our food, to our music. My kids love Bollywood, you know, Bollywood is a thing with all of our kids, they just love it. So we actually have this deep affection for your country and for your culture and I always say this too, imagine if we never had Indian food in our Australia, we would be sentenced to 100 years of English cuisine.
(End of Excerpt)
WENDY CARLISLE: There’s more at stake than being rescued from a century of bad British food. India is one of the main buyers of Australian education – after coal and iron ore, it’s our third biggest export earner. But Australia’s education exports face much deeper problems than safety issues, there’s now a rising clamour over dodgy courses, student rip-offs and an education system that’s turned into a visa factory.
PUSHPINDER KAUR, STUDENT’S MOTHER: It is a fraud, it is we were shown so many rosy pictures about the school, actually it is not what it was really, what it really is, it is only, it was just a scam.
WENDY CARLISLE: If there is one principle that governs the export of Australian education, it is now simply money.
BOB BIRRELL, MONASH UNIVERSITY: Well, basically they’ve been bedazzled by the dollars.
WENDY CARLISLE: On Four Corners tonight, the dirty secret behind Australia’s other education revolution.
(On Screen Text: Holy Cash Cows, Reporter: Wendy Carlisle)
(On Screen Text: Crash Landing)
(On Screen Text: Hyderabad, India)
WENDY CARLISLE: Last year 75,000 Indian students came to Australia to buy an education, and the possibility of a new and more prosperous life.
(On Screen Text: 9 July 2009)
Pushpinder Kaur and her son – aspiring pilot Prabmeet Singh – are preparing to meet with a high level delegation of Australian bureaucrats, police and academics. For Prabmeet Singh studying in Australia was a deeply unhappy experience and there is much unfinished business.
(Excerpt of footage of Pushpinder Kaur and Prabmeet Singh driving in a car)
PRABMEET SINGH, STUDENT: Let’s hope we can find some help this time.
PUSHPINDER KAUR, STUDENT’S MOTHER: You went to get wings but your wings are clipped actually.
(End of Excerpt)
WENDY CARLISLE: The highly publicised Australian delegation has been rushed to India. It’s an exercise in damage control.
(Excerpt of footage from delegation meeting)
COLIN WALTERS, FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: The education system of Australia has no time for racism in any form and absolutely condemns attacks on students, attacks on Indians.
(End of Excerpt)
WENDY CARLISLE: But safety isn’t what many of these parents have come to complain about. Pushpinder Kaur says a Sydney flying school has taken their money, left their family broke and her son with no pilots licence.
(Excerpt continued)
PUSHPINDER KAUR, STUDENT’S MOTHER: The first instalment we had to pay in advance that is for about $3,500, the total is about $43,000, and when the whole of the amount has been credited to the account of the aviation school there, which is known as Aerospace, and the chief flying instructor’s name is Sue Davis and she has taken the whole of the amount and after that she has stopped imparting any training or given any training flying hours to the students there.
My son and one of the other students is here, right before this honourable delegation. And they have come back, and their careers are ruined and we have lost all that money which we have sent there.
COLIN WALTERS, FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: We will take the depositions back and we will have a look, we will talk to the authorities in New South Wales and we will also look at our own legislation and see if there is any further possibility of intervening in that case.
(End of Excerpt)
WENDY CARLISLE: Pushpinder Kaur has heard all this before.
(Excerpt continued)

PUSHPINDER KAUR, STUDENT’S MOTHER: I’d just like to advise the honourable Australian members that already we have taken this matter up with the state regulatory bodies like VETAB (Vocational Education and Training Accreditation Board) and DEEWR (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace relations), but nothing has been done so far.
COLIN WALTERS, FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: Righto. Well we’ll certainly take that back with us and see if there is anymore we can do. Thank you very much.
PUSHPINDER KAUR, STUDENT’S MOTHER: Thank you.
(End of Excerpt)
PRABMEET SINGH, STUDENT: It feels really sad, really bad, because I had gone there to fulfil my dream to become a pilot. But you know all my dreams have been shattered.
WENDY CARLISLE: If Prabmeet Singh’s dreams have been shattered, back in Australia his friend Surendra Egalapati is still trying to keep his dream of becoming a pilot alive.
SURENDRA EGALAPATI, STUDENT: I was very passionate about flying. I liked flying to fly, so I started this career in 07.
WENDY CARLISLE: Like Prabmeet Singh the school Surendra Egalapati chose was Aerospace Aviation run by Sue Davis.
SUE DAVIS, AEROSPACE AVIATION: We welcome having overseas students with us. They all bring delightful experience with them and we enjoy their time. May I add that our student of the year for the last two years has actually been a different Indian student.
WENDY CARLISLE: Surendra Egalapati is now at a different flying school. But within months of starting at Aerospace Aviation things started to go wrong.
SURENDRA EGALAPATI, STUDENT: I started complaining in the month of October. First I went to the Indian High commission, I complained there and they had a meeting with them and Sue Davis has assured that this is not going to repeat again. And the same thing, they have Indian high commission has told me that and after that the same thing is again repeating and repeating.
(Excerpt of footage of meeting between Indian students)
INDIAN STUDENT: All we guys are doing is refund what is not used from the college.
(End of Excerpt)
WENDY CARLISLE: Soon he discovered other students in the class of 2007 were having similar problems.
VISHAL SARAWAT, STUDENT: There were not enough planes not even, not enough instructors. I was like flying with around 21 instructors you know.
WENDY CARLISLE: Twenty-one instructors?
VISHAL SARAWAT, STUDENT: Instructors for this and like, it was like there was no responsibility in the school’s part, like it was like I have to beg to instructors to give me flight, like “give me flight, I want to fly, I want to fly”.
MUKESH PINDORIA, STUDENT: The rest of the time, well, go to school and you were told to sit under a tree with some plastic chairs around to hoping that someone does not show up and you get that flight.
WENDY CARLISLE: Sit under a tree?
MUKESH PINDORIA, STUDENT: Yes.
WENDY CARLISLE: Can you describe that for me? What was the scene?
MUKESH PINDORIA, STUDENT: Well, it’s just under a tree. You don’t have any other facilities. You’re just standing, even if it rains, you have to be out there. I mean there is no any other facilities inside where you can accommodate all the students.
WENDY CARLISLE: So how many would there be of you sitting under the tree at any one time?
MUKESH PINDORIA, STUDENT: Any one time, you might find 20, 25 students sitting under a tree.
WENDY CARLISLE: Scott Alex is a former student at Aerospace Aviation. He also quit the school over not getting his flying hours and was disturbed by what he saw.
SCOTT ALEX, STUDENT: It was definitely derogatory the way they spoke to them, the way they treated them.
WENDY CARLISLE: Can you give me an example?
SCOTT ALEX, STUDENT: Instructors or management?
WENDY CARLISLE: Take your pick.
SCOTT ALEX, STUDENT: Um okay instructors hating flying with curry eating Indian stinking yellow so on, and management, I know of a case where the operations manager actually pushed around a student who was complaining, so they just basically raised their voice and in the Indian culture you don’t raise your voice, it’s very rude. You especially don’t swear.
WENDY CARLISLE: The students had signed up for a commercial pilots’ licence course. Costing $43,500, Aerospace Aviation was to deliver 200 hours of flying over 52 weeks. But in Surendra Egalapati’s case, he only received 130 hours over an 18 month period. A story it seems, repeated throughout the school
KAPIL RAJ, STUDENT: In the matter of four or five months I could only get 17.9 hours of flying.
YASWANTH MUDUNURI, STUDENT: I got only 50.9 hours of flying.
ARUN KUMER, STUDENT: I did 46 hours in 16 months.
VISHAL SARAWAT, STUDENT: I will use the word wasted my time, 16 months being there, like achieving nothing over there.
SUE DAVIS, AEROSPACE AVIATION: Aviation requires a commitment. We provide the facilities, the aircraft, the highly qualified trainers, but it must be matched by the student’s desire to reach a safety standard. I won’t back down from that. I take that most seriously, as a delegate of CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority) that these students must meet the requirements.
We have provided everything that those students need to get through the course. The students need to provide the diligence, the dedication and the commitment.
WENDY CARLISLE: So are the students lying? Why would the students do this?
SUE DAVIS, AEROSPACE AVIATION: I think students when they’re away from home perhaps don’t meet up to their parents’ expectations. As a mother myself, I understand when our children let us down. And it’s a young man’s issue that they have to now face up to the fact that they haven’t provided the diligence that they require to get through the course.
(Excerpt of footage of reconstruction – students going to DEEWR headquarters)
WENDY CARLISLE: By October last year so many of Aerospace Aviation’s students were complaining, that DEEWR – the Federal Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations – invited them down to their Sydney headquarters to hear their stories. Twenty-six Indian students turned up, as well as Scott Alex.
(End of Excerpt)
SCOTT ALEX, STUDENT: They said to me, we’re too nervous, we want you to come with us. So I did. And when they asked what’s happening, everybody was quiet. And then I said one thing, one point like “you have to pay $5,000 a month whether you fly or not, that’s a bit wrong”, and then everybody just started talking. So I just went there for moral support I guess you could say.
WENDY CARLISLE: And with the department, the officers, did they give any undertakings to actually fix the problems? What did they say that they were going to do?
SCOTT ALEX, STUDENT: Oh yeah, they were shocked, they were shocked and appalled with everything we said, yeah.
WENDY CARLISLE: But if the officials from DEEWR were shocked by what they were hearing – they were slow in reacting. The students felt their complaints had disappeared into a bureaucratic black hole.
SURENDRA EGALAPATI, STUDENT: I don’t think so they’re running an investigation. I do the, if they do an investigation it could take hardly two months or one month, not more than that. But it has been some six to seven months till now.
WENDY CARLISLE: And you’ve heard nothing?
SURENDRA EGALAPATI, STUDENT: And we, we didn’t heard anything from them.
WENDY CARLISLE: After eight months of waiting for the Department’s response they gave up and took a dramatic step to recover their money.
MUKESH PINDORIA, STUDENT: Well if someone would have listened to us we complained to the school first, and then we went to the Department of Education. We went to Department of Immigration too and Department of Education and Employment and Workplace Relations, but no one listened to us and now we have ended up here in the Supreme Court of New South Wales.
WENDY CARLISLE: Eight of the Class of 2007 filed a statutory demand notice on Aerospace Aviation calling for the refund o
f $157,000 or the company would be wound up. Last month it went to the New South Wales Supreme Court where the students were in for a nasty surprise.
(On Screen Graphic – Sue Davis’ Affidavit)
WENDY CARLISLE: In her affidavit, Sue Davis included a five page report from DEEWR – which appears to be an investigation into the students who launched the legal action.
Surprisingly, this document didn’t address the detail of the students’ complaints nor did it examine their side of the argument, but nevertheless concluded “it would seem the students complaints have little or no foundation”.
WENDY CARLISLE (to Sue Davis): I’m just trying to understand why DEEWR would only be investigating or making a finding on the students in this document which were the ones that appeared before the Supreme Court.
SUE DAVIS, AEROSPACE AVIATION: Well I’m sorry, you’d have to ask DEEWR that.
WENDY CARLISLE: Is it coincidence?
SUE DAVIS, AEROSPACE AVIATION: You’d have to ask DEEWR that. I can’t answer for DEEWR.
WENDY CARLISLE: So how did this document end up before the Supreme Court? We asked the Department of Education to explain just why it conducted an apparently one sided investigation on behalf of Aerospace Aviation into the Indian students.
(On Screen Graphic – written statement from Department of Education)
WENDY CARLISLE: In a written statement, the Department told four corners “for privacy reasons it would be inappropriate to discuss individual cases”.
The Department’s conduct raises fundamental questions about the integrity of the Government’s investigations into student’s complaints. Four Corners requested an interview with Education Minister Julia Gillard but she declined.
KARL KONRAD, AUST. IMMIGRATION LAW SERVICES: It seems to me that the protection of the school and the business interests of the school overrides the protection of the student or the student’s right to know, or any other Australian citizen’s right to know as far as I can see.
WENDY CARLISLE: But you got the Deputy Prime Minister saying she is committed to ensuring quality in the education that we provide international students. Do you question that commitment?
KARL KONRAD, AUST. IMMIGRATION LAW SERVICES: I openly question that commitment because the quality of their investigations would have to be regarded with anybody, with any investigation experience as a joke.
WENDY CARLISLE: But for Surendra Egalapati, the greatest surprise was yet to come. In her affidavit, Sue Davis makes the claim that his plane had strayed out of the training zone and into Sydney controlled airspace on July 29, 2007.
WENDY CARLISLE (to Surendra Egalapati): It says on 29th of July that you penetrated Sydney airspace. Did you this?
SURENDRA EGALAPATI, STUDENT: I didn’t do this. I started my flying from August 21st, 07. The proof is my log book. This is my logbook. And my first flight is August 21, here at 07. This is a false evidence, I don’t know what evidence she is going to show, but I can, this is my proof.
WENDY CARLISLE (to Sue Davis): Did you swear a false affidavit in order to smear the character of Surendra?
SUE DAVIS, AEROSPACE AVIATION: I did not swear any false affidavits at all, the documentation was before the courts. Mr Surendra did not advise us that there were problems that he could see, we understand that the paperwork was correct.
WENDY CARLISLE: This is your document, that you have submitted before the Supreme Court.
SUE DAVIS, AEROSPACE AVIATION: That’s correct.
WENDY CARLISLE: That you swear is true.
SUE DAVIS, AEROSPACE AVIATION: And Mr Surendra has a copy of that.
WENDY CARLISLE: Sue Davis has now told Four Corners she made an error in her affidavit.
Earlier this month the students’ case against Aerospace Aviation was set aside here in the Supreme Court, the court found the students had pursued the wrong legal route against the flying school and ordered them to pay costs which could amount to tens of thousands of dollars.
And now, in what must seem a cruel twist to the students, the New South Wales Government has found that the flying school has been using unqualified flying instructors – an offence so serious it risks losing its registration.
VISHAL SARAWAT, STUDENT: Obviously I’m very angry. I’ve like taken a loan. It’s a big loan and I paid the money to the school. I came here for a purpose, which is like I haven’t got anything, I haven’t got the my commercial pilot licence.
WENDY CARLISLE: The experiences of the Indian students at aerospace aviation are not an isolated example. Karl Konrad, a Sydney migration agent, has been trying to raise the issue.
KARL KONRAD, AUST. IMMIGRATION LAW SERVICES: I mean for years I’ve been writing about dodgy education providers in Sydney and nobody cares. I’ve even sent my newsletters about them to the Commonwealth Government and didn’t, don’t even get a response.
Nobody comes and asks me you know what’s going on in Sydney because they don’t really care, but certainly since the international students have come out, it’s brought up yes their safety issues, but there’s all these other issues which have been going on that nobody has cared about.