Ottawa Aviation Services Closed Abruptly In Mid-December

After losing its accreditation as a private career academy on December 12, Transport Canada on December 17 cancelled the school's certificate to train pilots and aircraft maintainers, saying the school did "not meeting the requirement of appointing key senior safety personnel to their organizations.”

Employees of the company told The Ottawa Citizen newspaper that they began to suspect that something was wrong last summer, when OAS stopped sending paychecks. Flight Instructor John Richardson said he's owed between $25,000 and $30,000 in back pay and expenses. He said he and some other instructors stayed out of a sense of obligation to the students at the school.

Students were paying $5,300 per month in tuition, and were supposed to be flying three to five times a week. But one student, who had held a previous career as a strategic consultant, did some digging and discovered that many students were only flying a few times a month.

The government agency that oversees private career colleges said that the students will have access to Ottawa's Training Completion Assurance Fund to assist them in continuing their training elsewhere and recover money they paid in tuition but for which no services were provided.

Cedric Paillard, a former Ottawa tech executive who founded OAS in 2015, said that the school is not closed for good. He said he closed for restructuring when the government withdrew its certificate to operate as a private college.

But Richardson has his doubts. “I’m not sure how you do that. You’ve got no planes and no instructors,” Richardson said.

FMI: Source report