Airline Training Academy out of business

[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?