Male’, Maldives – With all aircrafts of Addu flying school grounded for maintenance, the courses of the students studying at the facility have come to a standstill
In an interview to local media outlet “adduLIVE” , a student studying at the flying school run by the flying school, which is officially known as the Asian Academy of Aeronautics (AAA), said that after the crash of flight RG172 in January, the school had a total of 11 operational planes. But this number was brought down to only 3 after the school had to close down during the Covid-19 lockdown, due to the absence of the Airworthiness Manager at the school.
“Those 3 flights have also being grounded since yesterday as the school doesn’t have an Airworthiness Manager here now. It has been about six months since the school doesn’t have one. If the school put some effort to fix this, this problem would have been solved by now,” the student said.
Students believe that the absence of an Airworthiness Manager for almost six months is due to the negligence of the school management. They added that while the school knew that without an Airworthiness Manager present, multiple flights would be grounded and student’s flying will cease, the school did not take any prevention measures.
The student said that with the grounded flights, flying times would increase and the overall course duration would increase, resulting in extra expenses from the students for each passing day.
This is not the first time the school has made headlines for failing to deliver proper education to the students of studying at the institution. Just recently, the Student’s Union of the school have filed multiple complaints with the Ministry of Higher Education and Maldives Civil Aviation Authority. While both authorities say that the complains are being investigated and that the issues will be solved, with proper action taken where necessary, the school continues to defy the notices sent to the school by the authorities.
According to the students, emails of termination and notices of deadlines within which students are to finish their exams have been sent to some students by the school, while the school has been notified by the Ministry of Higher Education that the school must prepare individual study plans for all local students and have these plans approved by the Ministry within 20 days. Despite this, authorities remain silent.
