Airline Training Academy out of business

[azpilot]

I hope all future pilots now understand LOUD & CLEAR. DO NOT PAY EVERYTHING UP FRONT!!!! If the school is not willing to take money as you go run away. There is no reason why a school needs all the money up front if they are well capitalized. That is what credit lines are for.

If many of you received a loan from the same organization you might see if they can put any muscle behind this. I doubt it though. You may not see any money for years and if you do it may be 10 cents on the dollar.

Sad to say but this is another reason to bad mouth all of the schools that tells complete lies in all the magazines.

There are NO shortcuts. There are no MAGIC schools.

Good luck

 

[asarjfo]

Jim Williams retired from Delta in '95 or '96. He did start the original Comair ( I think it was AAA or something), but signed 7 year no compete clause with Comair. When the time was up, his sons (Rob, Scott, and Jeff) started ATA. I don't know how much input their father had. He always seemed like a nice guy who showed up on Friday for "pilot talk" to tell stories of the glamour days. He never seemed that involved in daily operations.]

Rob currently flies for ATA (the airline) as a 737 Captain. He was the "best" out of the three brothers. You had to take what he said with a grain of salt. Make sure you give him a big "PAT" on the back if you see him on the line!

Jeff was fired from Comair and had the BIGGEST chip on his shoulder about life in general.....he was in charge of the maint. department......one of the angriest people in the world.

Scott looked like humpty dumpty and was "in charge" of daily operations. He liked to strut around and tell us how lucky we were to pay him for the honor of attending his school.

The rest of the disfunctional family worked there in some fashion.

I went through the program pre 9-11. They did deliver on the original promise and I was hired by ASA, but It was a fight every step of the way. There were alot of people that left pissed and broke, but there are about 100 of us at ASA and some more at Eagle.

I feel for the students who were ripped off, but don't feel one bit sorry for the Williams family. I hope you guys get whats coming to you and in the process get Jeff and Scott thrown in jail.

I think they would both make nice jail house bitches!

 

[jdog78]

Airline Training Academy was owned and run by the Williams family and the head honcho (chairman) was Capt. Jim Williams, a retired Delta pilot. Below him were his sons, Scott (headed what eventually became Comair Academy), Rob (former Comair CRJ capt. and currently flying for Amtran), and Jeff (former Comair Brazilia captain). All key management positions were held by Williams family members. Clearly, this sh*t eating trailer trash family can't run a business to save their lives and this is the unfortunate result. I'm sure the tuition paid by students and the unpaid employee wages have been funneled into Discover Air, yet another failing Williams endeavor.

My heart is breaking for those students who have now lost tens of thousands of dollars and the means to pursue their dream of becoming aviation professionals. The idea that fellow pilots could wreak such havoc in the lives of the next generation of aviation professionals makes me want to bring back lynching...just leave a trail of krispy kremes to a tall tree and their fat necks would be in nooses lickety split!
Say a prayer for our fellow airmen in their time of need.

john

 

[350DRIVER]

Pretty sad for the students who may have just saw their dreams go down the tubes with this operation. I can only "hope" that most will be able to get ALL money back that was paid up front.... Unreal how much they got up front.. P!ss poor management at it's best. I can only hope that these smucks pay a hefty price for what they have done to these students.

good luck-

3 5 0

what is the possibility of getting the money back.?? or atleast some of it?

 

[Bouyer]

NOT MUCH

MORE THAN LIKELY WHAT MONEY THEY MIGHT HAVE LEFT THE LENDERS WILL GET FIRST DIBS ON, THEN IF THERE IS ANY MONEY LEFT SOME OF THE STUDENTS COULD POSSIBLY GET SOME OF THAT BACK I AM NOT HOLDING MY BREATH

 

[T-Gates]

Pre-Post checklist....

Caps-Lock.........................Off

Ego...................................Checked & Set

Sorry Just a pet peeve of mine, caps is so dang hard to read.



--03M

 

[StrykerFL]

The aircraft that crashed in Daytona on the 18th of Jan was indeed operated by Comair Academy.

I did the ATA tour halfway through my stay at CAA and I must say that what I saw were some shady looking practices. Their salesman was even more greasy than the slimeballs at over Comair Academy.

 

[T-Gates]

I haven't visited that academy since April 2001 and I still (until now) got e-mails asking me to go there. I even saved one dated September 30, 2001 saying that they are actively placing pilots with Eagle. 10 days after one of my buddies got furloughed. That really pissed me off.

--03M

 

[100LL... Again!]

We must never let these guys start another business of this type.

Watch, wait and picket if necessary.

Sounds like they are a bunch of loser outcasts from the aviation business who could not make it as real pilots and needed a little pretend kingdom to strut around in.


-----------------------
"You'll never work in this town again" - famous hollywood quote.

 

[embdrvr]

I already posted this on another thread but here's an idea for some of the students. FAR 61.153(c) states that someone holding an ATP certificate must be "of good moral character." If that ATA pilot is a principal in the company someone should be talking to the ORL FSDO about investigating to see if he in violation of 61.153.
Think this idea is far fetched? I know of a DC-3 Captain that had his ATP suspended for mooning a group of CAP cadets while taxiing. Guess what FAR they used to yank his ticket for a while?
Mooning a group of prepubescent wannabe's pales in comparison to these allegations. I think it's worth a visit to the FSDO.

 

[Av8trxx]

"There are NO shortcuts. There are no MAGIC schools."

Absolutely. In this job market, what 'academy' is going to be next? I could never understand how being in debt an extra $30K more than necessary was worth the 'accelerated' experience anyway. Ah, maybe I am just a penny pincher...but I got all my ratings and never had to take out a loan to do it. I feel bad for those students but I think they were crazy to believe ATA in the first place.

"ATA the Enron of PFT"

Good one!

 

[vtchaz]

ATA Student List yahoo group

Hey guys, I've started a yahoo group to keep us all together on the SAME message board with a database we can all add our names and contact info to. That way we can keep track, make sure we all the the necessary information as quickly as possible, and any lawyers that do get involved, state or private, have a way to contact us. I don't want anyone falling through the cracks. If we have any chance at getting anything, it's got to be together. Pass the word along on any other internet message boards you know of and of course to all the students you know. Good Luck, hope this helps in some small way.


[email protected]

 

[FL000]

Re: what?

john doe why dont you tell me what kind of lesson was supposed to be learned from this

caveat emptor

 

[bobbysamd]

ATA

Jim Williams retired from Delta in '95 or '96. He did start the original Comair ( I think it was AAA or something) . . . .

That sounds correct. In the mid '80s CAA was known as Airline Aviation Academy until Comair purchased it.

Now I understand why the 150s I saw there looked so ratty.

I agree 100% with all advice given above. Get an attorney, contact the district attorney, and contact the U.S. Attorney. Among other things, this is fraud, bad faith and breach of contract. Once more, best of luck.

 

[logolight]

The reason why some of those airplanes didn't run was because the Williams' didn't put any money into fixing them. They had airplanes sitting in the hanger for over a year because they didn't want to put any money into it. Some of those Aztecs are fixable with a little money put into them. Although some of them need to be scrapped like 389EB. I flew every one of them and there are a few that have potential to be good airplanes if someone is willing to throw down a little cash.


_________________________________________

"Electrics are set, overhead panel is set, to the line..."

 

[CatYaaak]

Airline Training Academy was owned and run by the Williams family and the head honcho (chairman) was Capt. Jim Williams, a retired Delta pilot.
john

If that's the case, then there's your "deep pockets". Taking 100% of his retirement would go a long way to repaying the students. The nice thing about it is all 5 of them (yes, the daugher too) can sit in prison while the money still get paid.

 

[airjackson]

Not to be ignorant, but what the hell did 60k buy you at ATA? We used to see a lot of ATA students at ATP JAX taking their writtens, but I never asked many specifics about their training program.

 

[jetpilotjay]

Pre 9/11 it got you a pvt.-CMEL. After your initial ratings you went through their Air Stage II. Upon completion of stage II you had an inyerview lined up with American Eagle or ASA. Most people were hired but not all. Around march or april of 01' they lost their affiliation with ASA. Rumor was becuase of their ethics or lack thereof, don't really know. ASA was hiring from FSI after that. ATA still had Eagle. There was about 15-20 students a month getting hired at Eagle up until 9/11. One of my good friends there was in dallas doing the Physical on 9/11, they cut him loose. In july or August of 01' they dropped the price of AS-II down to 15K. The belief among most of the students at that time was that they were using tuition money to fund their little airline. Money was never spent on maintenance. I always said that as ATA students, we were better trained for emergency operations than anyother flight school in the country. Just about every flight in an aztec ended in some sort of failure or complication(actual not simulated).
It was a pretty common sight to see ATA aircraft taxi out for runup then taxi back for maintenance problems. Anyone whos flown out of exec can attest to that. You couldn't really complain though, they had your money. I decided there would probably not be any opportunities at the school after the 11th, so I bailed. I've been trying to get my money now for over a year. I've gotten a little but not all.

 

[machtuck]

Where the owners names Wolf or Gangwal? I feel for ya, they got us too (Usairways)

 

[172driver]

PVT - CMEL for $60K???????????????

How did they go out of business, for god's sake? They must've poured all that money somewhere. Discover Air is probably a good bet. You could go to Comair, FSI, or Riddle for less than that price. Why in the world would anyone choose ATA?

WTF is the deal with Discover anyway? I fly at SFB where I guess Discover is based. They have a Brasilia or two and a Jetstream. There is nowhere online, at the airport, or anywhere else I have found to buy tickets. They fly ridiculous routes that you could do faster driving. Furthermore, I have never seen passengers on any of their planes. Seems like they're up doing practice approaches and touch-and-gos all the time. Any chance they just ran that operation so that the owners could build time in cool planes?