The owner of a company that teaches Catalina Magnet High School students how to be pilots has been investigated by federal regulators for a host of violations, including operating unsafe planes, and agreed just weeks ago to pay $44,500 in fines.
And even though the Tucson Unified School District knew about the problems Arizona Aero-Tech was having with the Federal Aviation Administration, the district renewed the company's $115,000 annual contract in September, making it good for up to three years.
The shortcomings on the aircraft, including several Cessnas, have been fixed, but at one point the company was cited for operating a plane with too-thin landing-gear brakes, a crack in the rudder, a badly rusted engine firewall, unreadable instrument-panel markings and an inadequately secured fuselage panel.
Aero-Tech's owner, Tim Amalong, also owns the repair company, Velocity, that maintains the planes used in the program, and that company, too, was written up for several violations, including allowing seven aircraft to be returned to service without having an inspector sign the necessary checklists. It also did major alterations on a helicopter it wasn't authorized to perform. Additionally, the work was done improperly, aviation authorities said.
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Federal regulators suspended Amalong's mechanic's license for 120 days in November 2007 for using tape to make repairs on three aircraft.
The aircraft that were cited in the lengthy investigation, involving five separate cases, were on the list of planes available to students at Catalina, 3645 E. Pima St.
Amalong could have contested the findings before an administrative law judge, but chose to admit to all of the violations.
Amalong has held the last two contracts to provide flight instruction to the roughly 10 Catalina seniors annually who meet the medical requirements and maintain a "B" grade-point average.
Student safety is paramount, Amalong said, adding that his record speaks for itself — the company has flown roughly 3,500 hours with students over the past six years with no accidents.
He said the bulk of the violations consisted of "paperwork issues" and chalked up some of the problems to some of his new employees who may not have known the proper reporting format.
"All that's behind us now," he said, adding that he encourages parents with questions to come out and visit the program.
But Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the FAA's Western-Pacific region, disputed Amalong's characterization of the violations as minor. Penalties for a minor violation might trigger a warning letter, he said.
"A 120-day certificate suspension is a very significant sanction," Gregor said, adding that a suspension ranks on the high end of the sanction range, just below license revocations.
In September, for example, two former go! airlines pilots who fell asleep and overshot Hilo International Airport by 15 miles were suspended for the careless and reckless operation of an aircraft. The captain's license was suspended for 60 days. The first officer's suspension was for 45 days.
"We do not propose certificate suspensions for simple paperwork violations," Gregor said, adding that the fines are "very significant."
"Our inspectors found that Arizona Aero-Tech was operating unsafe aircraft and that Velocity had done improper maintenance — in one instance, maintenance that they weren't qualified to do," Gregor said. "These are very serious violations."
TUSD's procurement director, Leon George, said the district does not as a matter of course check regulatory histories on its vendors, adding that cases like this, in which companies must have a valid license to do work, are considered "self-certifying." He said his office had no prior knowledge of Aero-Tech's regulatory problems and that the bid process doesn't require that vendors disclose any past or ongoing problems.
The district put out a press release on Friday night, in response to a Star reporter's questions about the process, saying the TUSD Governing Board did not know about the fines. But others in the district had full knowledge of the company's conflicts with regulators.
The district did not produce records requested under the public records law about the company's performance, but Principal Linda Patterson, who is new to Tucson and is in her second year at Catalina, said she was given paperwork that shows there was a brake failure during a student landing in October 2006. The student was not injured and completed the landing successfully.
Although the previous principal, Dan Bailey, wrote a letter of recommendation on Amalong's behalf during the bidding process and called him a "consummate professional," Patterson said her staff's experience with Amalong was "frustrating."
Staffers had concerns over billing, she said, and were worried about scheduling student flights to ensure there wasn't a backlog at the end of the year that could scuttle certification. But, she said, Amalong had worked to allay those concerns, keeping records with more clarity and pledging to keep students on track to get their licenses.
She said she's wrestled with the program on other grounds as well, including the fact that it's a big expense for a relatively small number of students. And tracking data shows few of those students go on to work as pilots, but instead go to college and major in fields such as engineering and architecture.
Patterson said that as a child survivor of a United Airlines crash in Colorado that killed half of the people onboard, she is extremely concerned about flight safety, but said she'd been assured by district officials that the then-pending violations did not raise any safety concerns.
"We don't want to put kids in a program where anything threatens their safety," she said.
Amalong said the program is a great benefit to the students — it costs about $40,000 to become a commercial pilot, and the program provides the first roughly $10,000 in training for free. With the responsibility the program demands, he said, "the students seem to grow up very quick." He said he enjoys seeing their faces when they return from their first solo flight. "Other than the sigh of relief, you can just see that it's a huge accomplishment for them."
The FAA penalties come at a tough financial time, he said, given that flight schools are being driven out of business by an economy that's forcing people to give up expensive hobbies, compounded by high fuel costs and insurance rates.
He said he's been upgrading the planes since the violations, and each plane now gets a comprehensive inspection at least six times a year.
Lawrence Cutrone, who handled the bid for TUSD, said there was no formal evaluation of the company's performance during the course of the earlier contracts. He said he vaguely recalled a classroom teacher calling to express concerns, but didn't receive anything in writing. The teacher never called back, he said, so he assumed the problems were fixed.
The district sent requests for proposals out to 12 companies in April — when the violations already had been alleged — and received three responses.
The district had the option of allowing the vendors to make formal presentations in person, but instead relied on rankings by a three-person committee that reviewed the bids on paper, including Patterson, the classroom teacher who oversees the program and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who serves as the school's senior aerospace science instructor.
Two of the committee members ranked an alternate company, Sonoran Wings, as higher in terms of both quality of service and quality of aircraft, but Aero-Tech got an overall higher score, in large part because Patterson ranked it so highly. The only disciplinary action federal regulators have taken against Sonoran Wings was a letter of correction, which is on the lower end of the sanction scale.
The third bidder, Circle T Aviation, was still a new company in April, since it was formed in February 2008, two months before the bid was issued.
Patterson said she plans to sit down with Amalong to ask more pointed questions about student safety in the program. In the press release, TUSD legal counsel indicated the district will review its bidding process to ensure safety records are considered in any future flight contracts.
Mary Terry Schiltz, a taxpayer advocate who monitors TUSD, said she was concerned by what she called "an appalling lack of scrutiny."
"There needs to be more diligence and proper research on vendors, particularly when there are such safety issues involved," she said.
DID YOU KNOW
Catalina's aviation program began in 1995 and is one of the magnet programs TUSD offers students.
Students can earn their private pilot license by working with a certified flight instructor, and also can earn Pima Community College credit for avionic electronics and structural repair of aircraft.
