Can you take flight lessons if you are already a student at another university?

[skippera350]

Hi. I was an international student but now I have my green card. I want to help my friend this time. I'm a certified FAA flight instructor and I got a used Cessna 172 and I can just rent an office and register it as a part 61 flight school. My friend wants to come here from Korea so that I can help him get his PPL, instrument rating, flight instructor rating and commercial license. If I teach him with my plane, it costs less than $9,000 to get all these but the problem is that I or any part 61 flight schools can't issue an i-20. All those very expensive part 141 flight schools that can issue i-20s charge people $50,000 and that is ridiculous. You only get like 200 hours with that money and it is a BIG rip off. With $50,000 I can get him 1,000 flight hours and I can even overhaul my plane's engine after that. The only thing that bothers us is that he can't get any i-20 or visa through me. You can get a visa through small flight schools like mine in Canada or Australia but not in the US. I don't know why the ICE only allows those very expensive part 141 flight schools to issues i-20s. The government and ICE are killing all the small local businesses.

And of course, we don't want to give a dime to those rip-off schools.

So if he just go to another university to take a graduate program that is not related to flying, can he take flight lessons from me like afternoon or on weekends? Will the TSA approve his training if he gets a visa for that graduate program that is NOT related to any flight training? Or does he have to go to those very expensive flight schools no matter what his current F1 visa status is?

[Max Greenwood]

I think it's okay. It's an interesting question, though. Only I plan to go to flying college and I want to have a full picture. I know about the cost of education and can not throw away tens of thousands of dollars on a set of flight hours. Sometimes it seems like it's not worth the money and I'll just invest in the air.