Rick Garza was a flight instructor for two of the suspected terrorists who went on to perpetrate horrible acts on 9/11 in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, but when they were his students, he asked them to leave the flying club because of their lack of aptitude for flying. He still teaches students and every few weeks flies an air ambulance out of Blythe. — John GastaldoSAN DIEGO — Imagine, for just a moment, you’re Rick Garza.
It’s right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and no one wants to fly. The airline industry has been practically grounded — and so are your hopes of ever working in it as a pilot.
You still send out applications, knowing the competition is stiff among a growing pool of qualified, out-of-work pilots.
But you also know that at some point, potential employers are going to look into your background and find out: You were the flight instructor who trained, and then flunked out, two of the 9/11 hijackers.
It’s a role Garza has come to terms with in the 13 years since the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. His six lessons with hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and
Nawaf Alhazmi at San Diego’s Montgomery Field are memorialized in The New York Times, in books and in Google searches, his encounters with the terrorists helping form the historic narrative leading to the pair’s final destination: the Pentagon.
“I remember right after 9/11, my biggest fear was my name was going to be in every history book, and there’s going to be something negative associated with it,” Garza, 56, recalled. “It could have went both ways. I could have been a hero or a zero.”
Instead, Garza credits his connection to the attackers — and his conviction to flunk both of them out of flight training — to divine intervention.
“I remember just being on my hands and knees and thanking (God) for helping me make that right decision,” Garza said.
Neither of his former students were ultimately able to obtain pilot’s licenses and ended up as two of the four muscle men aboard American Airlines Flight 77, threatening the crew and passengers with box cutters and knives, while another terrorist, Hani Hanjour, flew the Boeing into the Pentagon. All 64 people aboard the aircraft, including the hijackers, were killed, as well as 125 victims on the ground.
Life as we know it changed for all Americans after that, some more than others. The attacks derailed Garza’s shot at becoming an airline pilot, and haunted him with nightmares. But the bad dreams have since faded, and his flying career is far from over.
‘I LOVED AVIATION’
As a boy, Garza would climb to the roof of his parents’ Bonita home and stare through binoculars at “these little dots dropping out of the sky.”
“I found out they were skydivers,” he remembered. He read up on the sport and, in a burst of childhood enthusiasm, goaded his friend into riding their bikes some 20 miles to get a closer look. They came home after dark, exhausted, dehydrated and in trouble with his mom. But Garza was hooked.
“I knew that was something I wanted to get involved with at an early age,” he said.
It wasn’t until his 30s, after working several years in Navy shipyards, that Garza decided to pursue his passion.
He said the ink was practically still wet on his commercial pilot’s license when he applied at the skydiving place from his boyhood. He flew on weekends and days off for Parachutes Over San Diego, dropping jumpers out of a modified Cessna 182. (He also learned to skydive. He’s got 24 jumps under his belt.) When the company closed about three years later, he decided to teach flying full time.
In his early-40s by then, Garza quickly became a popular instructor at Montgomery Field in Kearny Mesa.
“I loved aviation and I loved teaching people. That was a natural,” he explained.
In May 2000, he’d take on his most infamous clients.
‘DUMB AND DUMBER’
The flight instruction of al-Midhar and Alhazmi was set into motion with a phone call from the Middle East. The Saudi men had the funds to pay and the desire to learn, and Sorbi’s Flying Club told them to come on over.
These weren’t Garza’s first foreign students. He was used to teaching would-be pilots from all over — Japan, France, Italy, Canada, Germany — who came to the United States because the cost of instruction was more affordable. He was also used to navigating language barriers.
However, it was clear early on that these guys would be a challenge.
An instructor at another local flight school had already turned down one of the men after a lesson because of his poor English.
To Garza, Al-Midhar looked a bit sinister with what appeared to be a knife scar across one cheek.
“He was very quiet, he had those wandering eyes, always looking around,” Garza said.
Alhazmi understood English better and ended up doing most of the talking.
“Nawaf (Alhazmi) actually seemed interested, seemed like a very nice gentleman. That’s the one I had more interaction with. He seemed like an honest man.”
At their first lesson, Garza told the men to read the first three chapters of their flight textbook before their next meeting.
It was apparent by that next meeting that they hadn’t.
They couldn’t repeat back, much less remember, the French word for the rear components of an airplane.
“Did you read chapters one through three? How far did you get?” Garza asked.
“Page one,” Alhazmi replied.
On their introductory flight, as they neared landing, al-Midhar began praying aloud in the back seat, not stopping until they’d touched down.
Afterward, Garza approached Alhazmi and asked: “‘I’m a spiritual person myself. Who was he praying to?”
”He wouldn’t give me an answer, just kind of shook his head,” Garza remembered.
At one point, Garza pulled out the regulation book and asked them to read one of the requirements to becoming a pilot: to read, write and understand English. When asked to explain back to him what they’d read, they gave what had become their standard response: “Yes, very good, very good.”
Garza explained they were going to have trouble expressing themselves if they continued training.
Without missing a beat, they pointed to a twin-engine plane parked nearby, and asked if they could learn to fly it. Then they pointed to a larger plane — a King Air — then a jet.
“You have to learn in this first,” Garza stressed, pointing to the small Cessna 172.
“Then they asked me if they could fly Boeings.”
Vexed, Garza told them he’d give them one more shot. He instructed them to go home and learn the alpha-bravo-charlie alphabet used by pilots so they could make taxi calls to the tower.
They didn’t. The next flight, the men couldn’t grasp simple radio communications, nor did they possess the mechanical aptitude for basic flight operations — straight-and-level flight, left and right turns.
As they took notes during one lecture, al-Midhar drew the wings on the plane wrong, making them sweep forward rather than back.
“It was like ‘Dumb and Dumber,’” Garza said.
‘DOING THE RIGHT THING’
Garza was at a crossroads with his two Saudi students. They clearly couldn’t understand English well or grasp flight basics. But it was also early in the training, and they had the money to spend.
Many other flight instructors might have kept them on, Garza said. Teaching is a starving industry. If someone will pay, you don’t turn them down.
Garza knew he had to do what was right.
“That’s when I sat them down and said, ‘Sorry guys, I can’t continue with you. My recommendation is to go to a school and learn English.’ They pleaded with me and begged me. They offered to pay me more money.”
“I felt bad I had to turn them down but I felt very firm in my decision. I was doing the right thing. They were going to be dangerous if I continued.”
The pair went to another nearby flight school, which turned them down upon hearing Garza had dropped them.
Garza saw them once more. They returned days later to pay him for that last lesson, the one in which he flunked them.
‘I TRAINED TWO MIDDLE EASTERN GUYS’
A year and a half later, Garza was at home when his best friend called. “Turn the news on. There are airplanes flying into the Twin Towers,” he urged.
“The first thing I saw was the Twin Towers, smoke billowing out, and the second plane hitting the second tower,” Garza remembers.
The Pentagon crash wasn’t far behind.
“A whole bunch of emotions ran through me. I didn’t make any connection. They had no connection then.”
He drove to the airfield, and by then the name “al-Qaeda” began floating around on the news.
The owner of the flying club, Fred Sorbi, had heard the hijackers were Saudi.
“I told Rick, ‘Go get the file on those two guys,’” Sorbi, now 65, remembered.
Garza responded with doubt: “You don’t think it could’ve been… There’s no way…”
It was still dark the next morning when Garza was awakened by loud banging.
“Mr. Garza, this is the FBI. You’re not under arrest. We’d just like to talk to you,” came a shout outside.
The two special agents who sat him down started with very general questions: “We understand you’re a pilot. Wow, that’s great! How did you get into flying?”
Garza finally interjected: “Look I have something I’d like you tell you guys. I trained two Middle Eastern guys I suspect might have some connection with the 9/11 attacks. When they came to me, they wanted to fly Boeings.”
The agents showed Garza a photo lineup, and he immediately picked out his former students, although they were identified by different names.
The agents then pulled out a notebook, and it contained al-Midhar’s drawing of the backward wings.
Garza also learned that the Lemon Grove home of a prominent Muslim leader where his students had stayed was just blocks away from his own home.
The media soon learned about the connection between the hijackers and Montgomery Field. By the time Garza drove over, the place was swarming with reporters from around the world.
He quietly removed his business cards and name placard from the desk in an effort to keep a low profile, and sought advice from a criminal defense lawyer who was one of his students.
But he couldn’t stay out of the spotlight long. He agreed to a few interviews — The New York Times was important, he felt — and his story of his time with the terrorists went global.
‘YOU DID WHAT?’
Just before 9/11, Garza went to a job fair for SkyWest, the small commuter airline many of his friends had gone to. He was ready make the career leap.
Then the skies went quiet. The effects the attacks had on air travel were devastating even years after. He still went to his formal interview with SkyWest soon after the attacks, but he was all of the sudden competing with furloughed pilots from the major airlines for fewer slots. He wasn’t hired.
“When you get a pool of applicants, they’re trying to pick out the very best ones. Top notch pilots with clean backgrounds, they’re going to call those guys first. I knew that would affect me.”
He applied for several jobs after that, but would stay away from the commuter airlines that included questions about ever being under investigation or affiliating with known terrorists.
Garza found his niche around 2004, flying air ambulances. He currently pilots a Cessna 421 for Desert Air Ambulance, commuting to its base in Blythe and answering radio calls to ship patients to and from hospitals around Southern California, Arizona and Nevada. He only works 10 days a month, giving him time to pursue his other passion of serving on the leadership team of the Rock Church’s campus in El Cajon.
He also still teaches flying on the side. He’s even had some Middle Eastern students, but only ones whose backgrounds he knows.
“Rick is an awesome, good flight instructor. Very dedicated,” Sorbi said. “He’s a very, very good man.”
Like most Americans nowadays, Garza dutifully follows new travel rules put into place following 9/11 and other terrorist plots — padding through airport security in socks, removing liquids from carry-ons. But he also is realistic about the myriad new tactics being dreamed up by those who want to hurt our nation.
“I think terrorists, if they are really determined, will find a way to achieve what they want to do.”
Still, it gives him some solace knowing that al-Qaeda had two less pilots on 9/11, and therefore maybe fewer planes.
“Every once in a while, people Google my name, usually people I work with. When I tell them, they are alarmed a little and say ‘You did what?’”
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