AEPS Bankruptcy

[Kit Darby]

OOPS! wrong link form the latest pilot hiring news release. Here is the right one: http://www.jet-jobs.com/press releases/4.17.02.html

Kit

 

[bobbysamd]

Pilot shortage v. hiring boom

Very cagey, Kit. Now, you're playing games with "pilot shortage."

No, there is no shortage of people who want to be pilots. But, Kit, are jobs going wanting for lack of pilots? I don't think so, Kit.

I'm sure that Nancy Stuke at United has told you that her files are bulging with thousands of qualified applicants. I am careful to use your terminology, Kit. "Qualified" applicants. I mean, for example, such folks as extremely experienced commuter pilots and well-qualified military pilots with thousands of hours in the heavies and not fast movers. Here, again, Kit, qualified and experienced. Not 350-hour wonders whom United has been known to hire.

I'm not talking about aviation magazine editors who lift your "statistics," Kit. Of course, it didn't hurt that you had FAPA advertise in a couple of these magazines. Checkbook journalism? Maybe. Just the same, reputable news media quoted your FAPA statistics in the mid-'80s as their source of stories about the "pilot shortage" and that forty-thousand pilots would be needed during the ten-year period beginning then.

I am not a semanticist, Kit. But, I do see and read words and understand their plain meaning, and I see through what you're saying.

Thanks for responding, Kit. I do respect that.

 

[generaltso]

Look Air Inc. is a business. They want to try to sell as much stuff as they can... I can't fault them for that. I am a member, and I do enjoy what they offer as far as airline information. Also I put the magazine in the bath room and read it while I cr@p.

But bobby you must remember that they are a business. Have you ever seen the commercial where McDonalds claims it insists on using "only the finest beef"? Do you think that is true? Do you really think Papa johns is the best because it uses the "freshest ingredients"?

The bottom line is any business is going to bend the truth to favor what they offer to get more customers. That's the way it is, thats the way it always has been, and that's the way it always will be.

 

[de727ups]

A question and a UPS comment...

Kit....what is your personal opinion about PFT programs such as Gulfstream? I'm sure the career pilot magazine has been accepting advertising dollars from this outfit for years.

About UPS....we are not going to be hiring line pilots this year. I'm sticking my neck out a bit by saying that because I'm not a fortune teller...but that's my best guess and I'd put money on it. UPS may be hiring management pilots but these are not regular UPS, union, pilot positions....I would hate to see people be overly encouraged about UPS pilot hiring by seeing UPS management attending your conference.

I subscribed to FAPA years ago and felt like it was worth the money....especially the magazine. As I got older and wiser, and had more experience, I could see that you shouldn't believe everything you read....

 

[Caveman]

"The funny thing is that I have never met anybody that was hired from AEPS or UPAS."

I interviewed and was offered 3 jobs as a direct result of being an AEPS member. Two 121 airlines and 1 freight company. All of them flying turbine equipment. I got what I paid for and at $10 a month it was money well spent.

 

[flydog]

I have to call Mr Jim Dent of AEPS a liar

The Miami Herald article is a list of bankruptcy filings which is made public as is required by the courts

The name of the company and address match that of AEPS that we all know and love

If you check the links for the Department of State that Kit Darby posted you will also see that Jim Dent, AEPS, WED and the company AEPS that is noted in the bankruptcy filing are one and the same

So unless the Florida Secretary of State, the Bankruptcy Court and the Miami Herald are lying then Jim Dent and the crooks at AEPS are the liars

I guess the attitude that this is america and you can do what you want with your money is a good point but if we all followed suit then you could also say dont buy oil or work at Enron and let them do business as usual.

I am not saying that what AEPS does is illegal but I think it is certainly immoral and shameful

AEPS provides no service other than to promote companies that are usually PFT and take advantage of aspiring young pilots dreams to make a buck. Try to pick up an Aviation Career magazine without an article on some crappy operation like American Eagle or Gulfstream where all the pilots they interviewed sounded like the they planned to retire there.

Publisher says they have 85,000 members! Does anyone know how many aviation jobs are out there? I would venture a guess at less than 200 if you discount the few regionals and fractionals that are hiring. AEPS has less than 10 jobs that were posted during the last week. Your odds of AEPS getting you a job are about as good as getting on with Fedex with a DUI and a murder conviction and no turbine time

Without exception almost 90% of all the companies I have contacted through AEPS requested I pay for training, a type rating, or sign a contract where if I left in the first 5 years I owed them my firstborn. The rest received so many resumes through regular channels that the "AEPS applicant priority" was lost in the stack of 10,000 resumes

Nobody needs AEPS to land a job at Southwest, Fedex, or any of the majors that attend the Air Fairs but thats what theyll lead you to believe to get your money. The bottom line is no one would buy their magazine or attend their air fairs unless Southwest, Fedex and some of the other majors were there

 

[dispatchguy]

Tomorrow I fly to PHX and I get to whiz in a cup as a part of a pre-employment whiz quiz for a dispatcher position advertised on AEPS, and also my first dispatch job was in response to an AEPS posting.

So, yes, people do get jobs off of AEPS. I usually send my own cover letter/resume instead of their database record, but I do consider what I pay to be well spent.

Would I have been hired not having been an AEPS member? Probably, but for me, as a dispatcher, its value is in the postings, as I dont have the time to sit there and surf the net looking at every airlines website each day/week seeing who's hiring what.

 

[flydog]

With all due respect dispatchers, airport managers, flight attendants, and mechanics dont count

None of those people are living on food stamps, spending $30,000 on ratings, another $60,000 on a college education and competing againist 5,000 other applicants for a single pilot position for which they are paid $18,000 to start after they have spent 10 yrs building flight time to realize their dream

 

[Kaman]

Pretty **CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED**ed Arrogant statement

Hey Dude,
I think you need a refund on some of that $60K you spent on your college education, because if you took Philosophy 101 you'd have an understading of the "Seven Common Fallacies" in making a coherent argument.
Normally, I don't or wouldn't comment on a thread like this, but I take exception to your arrgoant asinine remarks about other aviation professionals not "counting". Typical pilot-type remarks that I'd expect from a sniveling, crybaby that wants it all and thinks the world owes him a favor and everyone else should demure to his obvious "superiority" because "I'm a pilot"....
Attitudes like your's are what gives the piloting profession a bad name with other aviation professionals and moreover is the distinction between a pilot and an aviator. I would say that you are a "pilot".

Regards,
ex-Navy Rotorhead and Airport Operations Officer

 

[kilomike]

I second bobbysamd!!

Bobbysamd put it very well--thank you for standing up to "Kit" and his fabrications of a pilot shortage! There never was one and there never will be one. Spreading out this kind of information to drum up dollars from all those hopeful wannabes is a real sham.

 

[bobbysamd]

Kit's business

Absolutely, Kit is operating a business. It's a business founded on getting customers. The trouble is, Kit's not being straight with his customers about the need for pilots.

Kit's customers are pilots who want to build a career. To attract, or should I say, lure, customers, Kit will appeal to their desires. These desires are to be professional pilots. Now, quite a few of Kit's clients knew they wanted a career and never gave "pilot shortage" a thought. But, quite a few of them dreamed of being pilots but didn't feel that the career was possible for them. So, enter Kit, with his "pilot shortage" spiel. "Forty-thousand pilots will be needed over the next ten years." He uses logic to support his claim, such as retirements and diminishing supplies of military pilots, which have been the airlines' preferred pilot source. He's told these folks what they always wanted to hear, and, voila, Kit has signed up another customer.

But, Kit isn't telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He is telling half-truths, i.e, sophistries. Sure, there are retirements, there are every year. And, the military is turning loose fewer pilots. However, Kit does not tell you that there are currently more than enough qualified pilots available to fill any vacancies and to cover expansion. My
G-d, with the number of qualified pilots available, you could staff a ton of new airlines! That is the truth! Don't take my word for it. Go ask, e.g., Frank Lorenzo, Dick Ferris, etc. Go back into history. Ask Ted Baker and E.L. Cord. None of these fine entrepeneurs had trouble staffing their airlines.

Kit and/or his company has opined, sort of, on P-F-T. Go read this page:

www.jet-jobs.com/articles/payartl.html . We had a big P-F-T discussion(s) several weeks ago and another poster found this link.

I'd love to read Kit's specific opinions on this issue.

 

[8sm]

Bobby,

You should have done better research before you relied on Kit's pilot shortage advise to start a career in aviation. If more than one airline turned you down perhaps they all saw something they did not like other than your age.

Kit has a business, we all have a choice whether to use it or not before spending thousands of dollars on lessons to get one of those pilot shortage jobs.

I'm sorry your dream of flying fulltime did not work out. It appears your present job affords you the time throughtout the day to respond to this board. Paralegal.......interesting.

Although interesting reading, your response did appear to come from a bitter pilot that did not make it.

Regards....8sm

 

[dispatchguy]

With all due respect dispatchers, airport managers, flight attendants, and mechanics dont count

None of those people are living on food stamps, spending $30,000 on ratings, another $60,000 on a college education and competing againist 5,000 other applicants for a single pilot position for which they are paid $18,000 to start after they have spent 10 yrs building flight time to realize their dream

Spoken like a true pilot (tongue-in-cheek of course) - fly safe!

But seriously, why not? I know dispatchers who spent their own $$ to get the Embry-Riddle 4 year degree, only to make 10 bucks an hour (and thats after license premium!) at Eagle working a 60 release/shift desk with an 0300 start time.

Student loans up past their eyeballs making 11 clams an hour. I knew one eagle dispatcher who also worked at UPS (I think it was UPS) as a box smasher in his spare time - just to make ends meet.

So, dont think for a second that pilots are the only group in this industry that spend a lot of coin to get their license - how much does a complete A&P cost?

It's your own vicious circle - you guys paid the high price to get there, and made the job so coveted thru the majors contracts, that everyone wants the job, so dont whine to me.

 

[bobbysamd]

8sm:

I decided to go into aviation full-time solely because I loved flying. Just like most everyone else. Hearing about Kit's "pilot shortage" certainly stoked my enthusiasm and made me believe that I had a good chance at a career. I had a couple of friends who had gotten hired, and I talked it over with people in the business before I decided to proceed. I didn't just plunge right into training from zero time. I already had all my single-engine ratings, including both CFI tickets. I earned them to put my flying on a paying basis. I had been flying for five years for pleasure, before I decided to change careers. At that point, all I needed were my multi ratings. So, paying thousands for a pilot shortage job to one of Kit's flight school advertisers was not an issue. In retrospect, I should have done that.

I'd love to know if something other than age caused the commuters to ignore me. I tried to find out from one interviewer and got nowhere. I presented the same or better quals to the airlines as my younger colleagues. Everything they asked for and more. They were just flight instructors, just like me. Nothing that would give them an advantage, such as 135 time. Maybe a couple had networked, but most had not. I was 40; they were in their early to mid 20s. See a pattern here? I do.

No one realizes more than me that resumes get lost in a shuffle. But, you'd figure that seeing updates from the same person several times a year would get someone's attention, and that someone would be perceptive enough to realize that this applicant must be very interested in working for the company and might turn out to be loyal employee who might make me, the pilot recruiter, look good to my superiors. Don't forget, Kit always preached persistence and optimism.

I was a FAPA customer because FAPA provided contact information and an entry into the hiring process. I didn't know how to begin. Providing information on how to begin was the reason why Lou Smith started FAPA in the first place, primarily to help separating military pilots.

You are right. Kit runs a business. However, it is unconscionable, I think, to run a business which is predicated on selling dreams founded on half-truths. Just ask airline H.R. I guarantee that it will tell you it has good, qualified applicants coming out of its ears right now. And, when the system absorbs those folks and it needs pilots, it just lowers the requirements and the void is filled.

I do appreciate and respect your sour grapes observation. However, I have a couple of friends who've had similar experiences, so I know I'm not alone.

 

[publisher]

Kit

Kit points out a number of things, obviously in a more detailed way than my explanation, but, it should be clear to all now that this conflict and legal issue revolves around UPAS.

I have no comment about Kits service, I think he does a reasonable job from some standpoints.

The fact is that he was trying to implement a charge to companies coming to his job fairs and it did not go through because they would not come. Companies come in many cases to provide information at the seminar stage of things.

It should also be clear that the reason Kit posted that information on his site is that he has an interest in the UPAS outcome.

ALPA did sell UPAS after suffering repeated and significant losses. According to some who should know, what was sold was not all there. I know when I went looking in their files for some information, there were traces that said other things were missing. The software is archaic and not web based.

I do know that ALPA and WED had been trying to settle issues for some time. While there may have been problems before September 11, they were exacerbated by it. I have been told that in fact ALPA did not want UPAS back in total, only parts leaving behind any liabilities.

The bottom line is that this situation is a microcosm of what is going on in this industry. September 11 has in fact effected us all and the legal parts will take years to sort out.

 

[LearAv8r]

Ok so maybe there have been SOME people hired by AEPS and UPAS but by looking at the past replies on this board it seems like there are a lot of pilots that haven't even been called by companies using AEPS or UPAS.

Like I said it is your choice and your money, you decide what is best for you. Somehow I think that the actual number of pilots hired by majors or regional using AEPS and UPAS are pretty slim. Even pre 9-11. Although this is just my thoughts and I don't think that I am that far off.


UPAS member for five years and not even one call. Interviewed at four majors and none of them were from AEPS or UPAS.

my .02

LearAv8r-

 

[publisher]

LearAv

As relates to UPAS,

TWA utilized this service as much as anyone and attended all the AEPS job fairs so people were hired. Delta was second and Alaska third. Did that mean that you did not have to have friends and letters of rec etc, No. Let's just say you averaged 10,000 active members pre 9/11 or so, what is your average of getting hired by one of these 4. Not that good. The thing about these databases is that they can be very specific as to what they want. Others are not even considered. It was basically who was there the day they put the group together for interviews and what their times were.

AEPS has resulted in more regional, corporate, and fractionals than majors, no doubt about it. Do these jobs not count. I don't think that we have ever had a job fair where people were not hired by Comair and others at those fairs. Does this not count? On this board you only get a very small sampling of people and many of them are looking. The people that were employed through these and are still where they went are not on this board.

 

[8sm]

Bobby,

We have limited time to sell ourselves once we get our foot in the door. Most of the time its not enough when many are knocking at the door. Anyone who took the time to explore your thought process would have realize your potential as an aviator, but most importantly a mentor i.e. PIC. You more than likely ran out of time.

I have the upmost respect for someone with your ability to intelligently express your thought process in written dialectic.
One of these days I'll get there.

My last observation: Get your law degree, you are a natural litigator.

Thank you for your response.

Regards......8sm

 

[bobbysamd]

bobbysamd, ATP CE-500, CFI, J.D.?

Thank you, sir. I'm too old for that, too, but I truly appreciate your thoughts I worked for an attorney who suggested that I go to law school. However, as improbable as it may seem, lawfirms also practice age discrimination. The kids in their mid-20s-early-30s are what they want, not someone like me who is already receiving AARP mail. They use the same rationale in evaluating applicants as does airline HR; that someone wanting a law career should have started for it when he/she was young, and that anyone wanting the career after forty must be some kind of dilletante and not serious.

You are absolutely right that we have limited time to sell ourselves. We work soooooo hard to make the mins. Don't get hired at the mins, published or actual, and, I truly believe, a scarlet letter is stamped on your (resume's) forehead. "What's the matter with this applicant? He beats the mins, but hasn't been hired??!! Don't bother with him", instead of just picking up the phone and chatting with him a few moments. Where's the harm? I sent materials to SkyWest for six years. I even had a former student who was hired there walk in a fresh app. I probably would have passed out in disbelief if SkyWest would have been on the other end of my phone.

You may be right that I ran out of time. I was getting older and more and more younger pilots were available. I thought that being older and having lived a little longer would make me worth a look. Just the same, even with all the laws that make age discrimination illegal, employers still practice it. Nothing written, but still institutionalized in every way.

I sure would enjoy seeing Kit address the older-pilot career-changer issue.

Thanks again, and fly safe.

 

[FL510GV]

AEPS, UPAS, AirInc.

AEPS, UPAS, AirInc., "acitve" member of all three. Do I NEED to be a member of any of them to get a job? No.

Any job that I am fortunate to get is probably the result of my 1)Qualifications 2)Persistence 3)Connections, in no specific order. It seems that a lot of people expect the pilot/aviation job services to be like the AB-DOMINATOR that you're thinking about buying off of late night TV Shop - pay a few bucks and get those rock hard abs while you watch WWF, but in this case it's pay a few more bucks and wait for the job offers to come streaming in while you watch WWF.

UPAS is dead. Publisher said it, "archaic software/not web-based...", and from all accounts, run poorly.

AEPS. Not likely to be useful for a job w/ a Major, but with my Type ratings this has proven to be a good source of keeping track of what's going on in the Corporate world. I have had several contacts via AEPS - no Majors, but good job openings that I wasn't available for. There are others that do a similar job - climbto350, AirNav, BizjetPilot.com, CorporatePilot.com -- the list is too exhaustive to complete (see http://www.landings.com/ for a good... for you is a part of the process. Godspeed.