Flight training for Aviation Students at Parks College of Engineering and Aviation has been grounded due to the recent terrorists attacks.
Parks students can fly under Part 91 Instrumental Flight Rules or Part 91 Visual Flight Rules.
With IFR operations the operator is always in contact, while with VFR the operator only has to be in contact once and flights are not kept track of.
Part 91 IRF operations have improved and are authorized, but VFR will be returning to the national aerospace system in incremental steps. VFR is currently prohibited in the lower 48 states.
Part 91 IFR aircraft operators are authorized to conduct operations from U.S. airspace, including Hawaii and all U.S. territories provided operators file an IFR flight plan and operate in accordance with IFR from departure to destination.
According to Joseph Skrabec, a sophomore, the grounded VFR operations will delay him from getting his pilot’s license, which could put him behind next semester.
Students are losing valuable lab time with these restrictions. Flight training is viewed as a lab. “We can still do the ground school (lecture) but not the flight. Students can only have so much lecture before the lab is needed,” said Charles Kirkpatrick, dean of Parks College of Engineering and Aviation.
“I have not been majorly affected by the closure because I am working on my instrument rating,” said Janelle Decker, sophomore. “I have been flying in the simulators, and I am still completing my lessons.”
According to Kirkpatrick, there is no need to increase the security of the simulators because they are not comparable to the multi-million dollar simulators that pilots use for training.
Parks’ simulators are designed for a beginner who has never flown before.
This past week investigators were on campus at Saint Louis University. “Once they identified the hijackers as students at flight schools in the country; we figured that every flight school in the country would be investigated soon,” said Kirkpatrick.
“It makes sense that they would go to a school that would give them intense flight training,” Kirkpatrick continued.
University President Lawrence Biondi, S.J. said in a special message to the University on Sept. 13: “The investigators’ visit was not prompted by any link between SLU and the terrorist acts but was part of the nationwide investigation that includes all schools of aviation like our own Parks College of Engineering and Aviation. We cooperated fully with the investigators, who have left SLU, and to the best of our knowledge, no one with any connection to SLU is a suspect in the investigation.”
According to Kirkpatrick, the University respects the rights of the students and is concerned about student privacy, security and safety but also has a responsibility to the community and country, and there is a need to balance these.
Kirkpatrick said that students should not think that the University is an extension of our government.
The SLU community has been good about coming together; whereas other universities have not been as good. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, where terrorists were trained, has received accusing mail, e-mail and phone calls with sayings like “quit training terrorists” or “send all foreigners home.
International students at SLU do not feel in danger on campus. Their primary concern is going out into the communities.
Some of the married international students in the St. Louis area are concerned about their family’s safety.
“I hope that everybody is able to keep their cool and not over react to this series of events,” said Kirkpatrick.
“There will be no effects on ROTC Cadets unless a draft is reinstated. All ROTC Cadets are students and will continue their curriculum as set out. Even though they are learning military strategies and techniques, they are not considered to be of active duty until they are commissioned, upon graduation,” said the Public Affairs Spokesman at Air University Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.
