Trail leads to flying school used by 11 September terrorists

Just like the 11 September suicide-hijackers, Kerim Chatty enrolled in a US flight school. Like many of them, he did not prove a particularly adept student and was thrown out of the course – and the country – after just eight months.

But officials in the United States yesterday seemed eager to play down the notion Mr Chatty was a dangerous terrorist, arguing that his history differed in several crucial respects from the 19 men who crashed the four aircraft last year and even from Zacarias Moussaoui, the Frenchman suspected of being groomed as a possible "20th hijacker" who was arrested in Minnesota on immigration violations three weeks ahead of time.

Nevertheless, the flight school Mr Chatty attended – the North American Institute of Aviation in Conway, South Carolina – received a visit on Saturday from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the lead agency in domestic counter-terrorism. Were the feds being thorough, or was something genuinely afoot? According to officials at the school, Mr Chatty underwent a rigorous admissions procedure including a four-hour written exam testing English, maths and other skills, plus a face-to-face interview. He enrolled at NAIA in September 1996, where he began training on Cessna 152 aircraft and later on Cessna 172s – light single-engine aircraft with little resemblance to the small passenger jet used by Ryanair that Mr Chatty was planning to board on Friday.

In April 1997, Mr Chatty had not made sufficient progress and was asked to leave. NAIA notified US immigration, his visa was rescinded and he left the country. Bob Sunday, the school's executive vice-president, told reporters he was not aware of any reason for him to be dismissed other than poor performance. "He did not cut the mustard. He never got a licence and he was let go," Mr Sunday explained.

Several aviation experts said yesterday that based on his NAIA experience alone, Mr Chatty would not have been capable of hijacking the Ryanair jet. The retired president of NAIA, Doug Beckner, told a local South Carolina newspaper: "All we were giving him was basic training, and we kicked him out. He would have had to train in a big simulator."

Mr Beckner said that did not mean he had not received further training elsewhere – something law enforcement officials in Sweden and the US have not so far suggested. "That's the big story, to try to find out, what did he do after he left our school? – whether he had advanced training in a big plane."

NAIA was last visited by the FBI in the immediate aftermath of 11 September, but a consensus appears to have emerged then that it is a well-run institution with tight control over its students' activities. It requires overseas students to hold a J-1 visa rather than a student visa. Anyone who does not show up to class is – at least in theory – immediately reported to the authorities. If anyone, such as Mr Chatty, is dropped from the course, Immigration is notified and the visa immediately rescinded. Once students complete the six-month course, they can stay in the US but must remain in contact with NAIA at least once a month.

Those rules make NAIA different from the San Diego flight school where one of the hijackers was enrolled on a student visa but never showed up. NAIA recruits heavily in Scandinavia. In 30 years of operation, just 5 per cent of its students have been from the Middle East.

As for Mr Chatty's personal habits, few details were forthcoming. None of the NAIA officials who spoke to reporters remembered him. "Did he stick out like a sore thumb? No," Mr Sunday toldThe New York Times. "Are we overplaying this thing? Yes. We're close to 11 September, and this of course should be checked out, but I'm thinking of Shakespeare and Much Ado About Nothing."