Huffman Aviation was a flight-training school in

Venice, Florida Venice is a city in Sarasota County, Florida, United States. The city includes what locals call "Venice Island", a portion of the mainland that is accessed via bridges over the artificially created Intracoastal Waterway. The city is located in S ...

at Venice Municipal Airport.

Background

Huffman Aviation Florida was established in 1972 as ''Venice Flying Service'', and was reorganized in 1987 and renamed as ''Huffman Aviation''. Huffman Aviation was purchased by Dutchman Rudi Dekkers in 1999. At the time of purchase, the school had a fleet of 12 small aircraft. Huffman offered private pilot, instrument rating,

Commercial pilot A commercial pilot licence (CPL) is a type of pilot licence that permits the holder to act as a pilot of an aircraft and be paid for their work. Different licenses are issued for the major aircraft categories: airplanes, airships, balloons, glid ...

, Multi-Engine Ratings, and

flight instructor A flight instructor is a person who teaches others to operate aircraft. Specific privileges granted to holders of a flight instructor qualification vary from country to country, but very generally, a flight instructor serves to enhance or evaluate ...

training, but did not offer training on larger, jet aircraft. Dekkers sold Huffman Aviation in 2003.

Controversies

9/11 pilots

The Huffman Aviation flight log of 9/11 ringleader and hijacker Mohamed Atta The business gained notoriety after the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

, when it was revealed that

Mohamed Atta Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta ( ; ar, محمد محمد الأمير عوض السيد عطا ; September 1, 1968 – September 11, 2001) was an Egyptian hijacker and the ringleader of the September 11 attacks in 2001 in which f ...

and

Marwan al-Shehhi Marwan Yousef Mohamed Rashid Lekrab al-Shehhi ( ar, مروان يوسف محمد رشيد لكراب الشحي, , also transliterated as Alshehhi; 9 May 1978 – 11 September 2001) was an Emirati al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist who served a ...

had attended the school to learn how to fly small aircraft. The two first trained at Huffman in July 2000. In August, the school filed the M-1 student visa request forms for Atta and al-Shehhi to switch from 'tourist'

visa Visa most commonly refers to: *Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company ** Visa Debit card issued by the above company ** Visa Electron, a debit card ** Visa Plus, an interbank network *Travel visa, a document that allows ...

s, to 'student', in order to allow them to enroll in the school's professional pilot program that would last from September 1, 2000, until September 1 the next year. The student visa requests were granted on July 17, 2001, for Atta, and August 9, 2001, for al-Shehhi. For a short while, during their time at the school, both Marwan and Atta lived with a company employee named Charlie Voss.

Security issues

In January 2002, Huffman Aviation again made headlines when the local paper sent a reporter onto its property, who managed to casually move between airplane cockpits, fuel tanks and other "safety concerns" without anybody noticing or stopping him. In March, the school was cited for having left fuel trucks unlocked, with keys in the ignition, at the Venice Municipal Airport.

References

{{Reflist Aviation schools in Florida Companies based in Florida Educational institutions established in 1972 Mohamed Atta September 11 attacks 1972 establishments in Florida