Dozens of former student pilots who say they have accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in debt for tuition fees are suing United Airlines and its flying school in the Arizona Desert, saying they don’t have enough teachers or aircraft to properly train and graduate students.
The federal lawsuit accused them of mispromoting United and United Avito Academy, and mispromoting an equipped, intensive training program that would lead students on the path to becoming commercial pilots a year later. The reality is that the student said in an amended complaint filed last week that flight times were limited due to a shortage of staff and frequent staff departures. In some cases, the lawsuit states that students were teaching other students.
Some students said they eventually left the program when it became clear that they would not finish training a year later. However, many of them alleged in the lawsuit that they were mistakenly expelled from schools because they “take too long to move forward” through the program.
During the pandemic, United managed to deal with it by purchasing a pilot school in the outskirts of Phoenix in Goodyear The serious issues facing the industry: There are not enough pilots. Airlines have been complaining about the shortage for years, but have been exacerbated during the Covid-19 outbreak by encouraging pilots to take early retirement when air travel collapsed in 2020.
In a statement, Chicago-based United defended the pilot school, citing the ongoing lawsuit.
“We are proud of the hundreds of graduates in our school, as we are proud of the rigorous curriculum and flight training programs offered at United Aviate Academy,” the statement said.
The lawsuit alleges that the school has a registration cap of 325 students “to ensure adequate resources.” Instead, more than 380 students were enrolled in the program in March 2024, according to the complaint.
Within months, the school’s accreditation bodies issued warning letters to the flying school for the number of registered entries, according to the lawsuit.
Around this time, the lawsuit alleges that United Aviate Academy began banishing students from the program “to adhere to registration limits.”
By August of that year, the school had been placed on probation by the Career School and University Accreditation Board, according to the lawsuit. The school voluntarily revoked its accreditation in January.
United told the Associated Press that it is “investigating alternative accreditations that better meet the needs of flight schools.”
Richard Levy, a retired captain who has been flying to major international airlines for 41 years and now works as a flight instructor in Texas, said the one-year programme is in line with industry training standards. He said students who want to fly commercial jets usually train for about a year, work for local airlines, and record additional flight times (up to 1,500 hours) before flying to major airlines.
Importantly, students are flying frequently and follow a structured, uniform programme during training.
However, the lawsuit states that at one point there were around 20 aircraft for the hundreds of students enrolled in United’s flight schools. One student said he was able to fly only once or twice over several months and became a reassigned instructor. He was eventually expelled through his course because “it takes too long to advance,” the lawsuit alleges.
Another exiled student said she had a different instructor between each of the first four flights. During her eighth flight, her instructor said she was a fellow student in the program.
“Students were teaching students,” the lawsuit says. They also claim that students were sometimes evaluated by instructors who were not the pilots themselves.
Levi said he “had never heard of” non-pilots of pilots assessing student pilots.
Most of the students who sued said they took out loans in the hopes of participating in a one-year program that led to “beneficial employment.” Many of them had to move to Arizona to join the program.
According to the lawsuit, one student sold his home. Another left her 21-year job to “pursuing her dreams” to become a pilot while her husband stayed behind at her home in Texas.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Phoenix on behalf of 29 former students across the country, including Florida, Texas, California, Colorado, Nevada and Connecticut.
Source link
