[cashflyer]

At the flight school where I earned my instructors certificate, I was amazed at how many foreigners there were. There were Philippinos, Central Americans, and Africans scattered throughout the housing building - along with us regular Americans. But what surprised me was how many middle-easterners there were - so many that they basically filled a whole wing of the building. This was in 1998.

Who would have known that just a few years later, Zacarias Moussaoui would receive flight training there. And although they received their training in Florida, both Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi had tried to enroll at the school around the same time I was there.

The school closed in September of 2005, as tightened visa restrictions made it difficult to get the high numbers of foreign students that they relied on. (So "foreigner oriented" was the school that Suriname had the school do all of their initial pilot training for their Air Force pilots).