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Who's
Trying To Kill
9/11 Flight School Owners?
By Fintan Dunne
Editor, GuluFuture.com
January 25, 2003
PAGE
URL
http://www.gulufuture.com/future/big_chill_z.htm
It's just not fair the way your luck can run real bad at times. Ask Rudi
Dekkers. Yesterday Rudi was lucky to survive after his helicopter crashed
into a river in Florida --just 24 hours after AP reported he was about
to be arrested by the State Attorney's Office on felony fraud charges.
That was the SECOND air crash involving owners of flight schools which
trained 9/11 hijackers.
There is a chill
wind blowing. Not just because it was the coldest day of the year in Southwest
Florida on Friday, but because somebody may be cleaning up a few loose
ends from the 9/11 terror attack.
Yesterday the man who ran Huffman Aviation --the flight school which trained
Mohammed Atta-- crashed his FH-1100 helicopter into an ice-cold Caloosahatchee
River. The 46-year-old native from Holland, whose Huffman Aviation flight
school made national headlines when it was discovered it trained two Sept.
11 terrorists, nearly drowned trying to escape his sunken aircraft. But
a friend and fellow chopper pilot pulled the freezing Dekkers from the
river, dragging him to shore as he clung with both hands to the chopper's
skids.
"I really thought I was going to die today," said the Bonita Springs resident,
hours after surviving an episode unmatched by any reality TV show. The
FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the
crash.
 The
plane hit the water at 40 mph to 50 mph, shattering the front windshield
and instantly filling it with water. The force of the impact flipped the
helicopter onto its right side — covering the escape route.
"In one or two seconds the plane was upside down and I was facing the
bottom of the river," Dekkers said. Visibility was zero.
"It was pitch black," Dekkers said. He was wearing a bulky sweater and
jacket, and couldn't get out of the shoulder harness. He struggled for
four or five seconds, gulped down water and began to panic.
"I thought this was it. I thought about my wife and kids and thought they
were going to have to do it without me," he said.
Dekkers put his left leg underneath the 2,000-pound aircraft and pried
it upward, escaping underwater beneath it. "I had to push away from ground.
I used my weight as leverage and made an opening between it and the bottom
of the river," he said. He swam to the surface of the possibly 10-foot
deep water.
A following helicopter had circled around, and as Dekkers got to the top
of the skids, the pilot took the chopper dangerously low to the water
for Dekkers to grab hold. He lifted Dekkers about 20 feet high and took
him to the south side of the river, to the back yard of a newly built
but-not-yet occupied home. It took an emergency worker 10 minutes of warming
Dekkers with thermal blankets before the lowest temperature on the ear-thermometer
registered his 91.8 degrees, Dekkers said. Doctors at Lee Memorial Hospital
told Dekkers that the weight-loss and exercise program he has been on
for the past year is what saved him.
Just this week, Dekkers was accused of failing to repay a loan
to his business partner and is now facing felony fraud charges and possible
arrest. The day before the chopper crash, The Associated Press reported
Dekkers was about to be arrested by the State Attorney's Office on felony
fraud charges for selling a building without paying back a promissory
note-holder $300,000. Dekkers has denied wrongdoing and provided documents
Friday showing the complainant no longer wants to pursue the matter.
Dekkers says his luck changed Friday. "This is a blessed day," he said,
his voice cracking with emotion. "I don't have to go to court, I am still
alive and I sold my business."
PREVIOUS CRASH
On July 5th, 2002 Arne
Kruithof, another Dutchman and owner of Florida Flight Training had another
lucky escape when a private plane nose-dived to earth after taking off
from the Venice Airport.
 Kruithof's and
two companions cleared the shattered fuselage of the Twin Beech E18 to
safety only moments before the plane exploded in a fireball.
Kruithof's school trained Siad Al Jarrah, who was on the aircraft which
crashed in Pennsylvania on 9th September 2001.
The survivors were on a pleasure trip to Cancun. Venice Police said they
"were really lucky to walk away." Mechanical failure was believed
to be responsible, but the precise cause of the crash remains unknown.
There seemed to be a great deal of haste in clearing the wreckage.
"The plane was almost immediately dragged off to be compacted even though
the FAA hadn't yet determined the cause for the crash," one local aviation
observer told
Daniel Hopsicker of MadCow Morning News.
"That's not just irregular.
It's highly irregular. So we're all kind of wondering just what the hell's
going on"
See MadCow
Morning News for more.
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