Southeast Airlines closes doors

[Dizel8]

From Yahoo:

LARGO, Fla. - [size=-1]Southeast Airlines, a Florida-based discount airline serving seven destinations along the Atlantic seaboard and Midwest, announced that it has ceased operations. [/size]

Best of luck guys and gals.

 

[DCitrus9]

Does anybody have the backstory on this? One minute I'm reading an article stating they are expanding their service at Sarasota, the next minute...http://www.flyseal.com/index.htm
Good luck to all involved.

 

[Flying Horses]

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

ADVERTISEMENT

LARGO, Fla. (AP) - Southeast Airlines, a Florida-based discount airline serving seven destinations along the Atlantic seaboard and in the U.S. Midwest, says it has ceased operations.

The company said in a statement posted on its website late Tuesday it "has made its final landing and has ceased airline operations. We apologize for the inconvenience this will cause to our customers."

The airline said the decision was due in part to high fuel costs. There was no answer at its Tampa Bay area corporate office early Wednesday and a company official could not immediately be reached for comment.

WTSP-TV in Tampa/St. Petersburg reported on its website that employees were called to the airline's corporate headquarters Tuesday night, given their last paychecks and told they no longer had jobs.

The airline served Allentown/Bethlehem, Pa.; Newburgh, N.Y.; Gary, Ind.; Columbus, Ohio; and three Florida locations: Fort Lauderdale, St. Petersburg/Clearwater and Orlando.

 

[Flying Horses]

I just saw a television commercial for Southeast 2 days ago. This was completely unexpected and happened overnight yesterday. Passengers were stranded this morning at the airport, having no idea that Southeast went out of business.

www.flyseal.com

 

[Newjetjockey]

How many pilots did Southeast have? Good luck to you folks.

 

[Ty Webb]

Called 'em in and gave them their last paychecks?

That had to be a first for any St. Pete-based airline. Usually, they just slink off into the sunset, carrying whatever loot is left in the drawer.

 

[75M]

Ty,

Ask Bob if we can honor their tickets on a standby basis to get those people home and build good will. I know you have the pull.

 

[Ty Webb]

Every time I call the number he gave me, it rings at some pizza joint in Pittsburgh. I don't understand it.

 

[75M]

Well, whatever you did worked...

AirTran Airways to Assist Passengers Affected by Cessation of Southeast Airlines Service
Wednesday December 1, 3:57 pm ET


ORLANDO, Fla., Dec. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AirTran Airways, a subsidiary of AirTran Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: AAI - News), today announced a program to assist those passengers affected by Southeast Airlines' cessation of their operations.
In response to Southeast Airlines' announcement that they shut down their operations on Tuesday, AirTran Airways has implemented a program that will enable affected passengers to reach their intended destination with minimal additional costs or frustrations.

Southeast Airlines ticket holders can now fly to their original destinations, or close proximity alternatives, via stand-by on AirTran Airways for a fee of $50 one-way plus airport and government taxes. This offer will be available for travel through December 8, 2004, to passengers with tickets on Southeast Airlines' flights.

Southeast Airlines passengers are to call 1.800.AIRTRAN prior to going to the airport in order to expedite their check-in process.

Following, is a list of the destinations Southeast Airlines passengers will be able to reach utilizing this AirTran Airways program:

* Philadelphia International Airport or Newark International Airport -
for passengers with Southeast Airlines tickets to Lehigh Valley
International Airport serving Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton

* Newark International Airport or LaGuardia International Airport - for
those with Southeast Airlines tickets to Stewart/Newburgh, N.Y.

* Chicago Midway International Airport - for those with Southeast
Airlines tickets to Gary Chicago International Airport

* Akron Canton Regional Airport or Dayton International Airport - for
those with Southeast Airlines tickets to Columbus Rickenbacker
International Airport

* Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport

* Tampa International Airport - for those with Southeast Airlines tickets
to St. Petersburg-Clearwater International airport

* Orlando International Airport - for those with Southeast Airlines
tickets to Orlando Sanford International Airport

 

[Ty Webb]

Must have been the veggie combo w/ pepperoni order that did it. It usually works for me, too.

 

[TriStar_drvr]

It would have been nice to see my airline offer some help for the stranded Southeast passengers. After all, we actually fly out of PIE.

Oh well, I haven't expected much from our management, and I haven't been disappointed.

Another example of why AirTran is doing well and ATA is bankrupt.

 

[climbhappy]

I worked there last year for 3 months. In fact, it was my first jet. The company Vepe was a former flight attendant. she was seeing the owner or so I'm told. The planes were always full, but they couldn't afford direct deposit. I blew out of there quickly but know my classmates are shocked.

The hurricane season and a blown engine or two probably did 'em in.

right here at Christmas isn't good. my prayers go out to these guys, many united , TWA furloughees.

 

[Boeingman]

Was their callsign "Sun King"?

 

[habubuaza]

Was their callsign "Sun King"?

Yes, it was Sun King.

 

[DonVerita]

Called 'em in and gave them their last paychecks?

That had to be a first for any St. Pete-based airline. Usually, they just slink off into the sunset, carrying whatever loot is left in the drawer.

That would have been a first. Unfortunately, Southeast is a degenerate company filled with the most unsavory venemous management this side of Frank Lorenzo. When their employees went to cash their final paycheck, take a look below to see what happened:

Southeast Airlines grounded

Wednesday, December 1, 2004
http://www.bn9.com/images/news/2004/12/1/south1.jpgMore than 300 workers were laid off.
Most Southeast Airlines passengers were shocked to hear the news that the airline ceased operations Tuesday.

On Wednesday, planes were left on the tarmac, ticket counters were empty and more than 300 workers were laid off.

Mark Shannon spent $3,800 on 20 flights to and from Allentown, Pa., to get his wife to and from Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa for treatments. Now he wonders if he'll ever get his money back.

"Nobody's giving any information," said Shannon "No phone number, no web site, nothing as what to do about refunds or anything."

Many passengers were left stranded.


But that's no help to passenger Julie Hodson, who won't be able to show up to work Thursday.

"It makes me feel angry because I have to [go] to work and stuff, so I don't know what I'm gonna do," said Hodson.

Many of the low-cost carrier's 367 employees who went to banks to cash their paychecks were denied, and were told the airline's account had insufficient funds. Some of them went to the Pasco-Pinellas State Attorney's Office to file charges against the airline.

Southeast served Allentown/Bethlehem, Pa.; Newburgh, N.Y.; Gary, Ind.; Columbus, Ohio; Fort Lauderdale, St. Petersburg/Clearwater; and Orlando.

 

[Ty Webb]

Sorry to hear it, but I can't say I am surprised.

 

[climbhappy]

Rogue business owners are nothing more than modern day pirates. Our system fails the cause of the working man. The DA should be able to freeze the assets of the owner and take possession of them until due process is done.

unfortunately, his assets are probably now offshore.

 

[habubuaza]

Southeast blow is big, sweeping

The shutdown leaves employees without jobs and unable to cash checks, passengers scrambling and the airport facing lost revenue.

​

By JEAN HELLER and STEVE HUETTEL
Published December 2, 2004


[font=Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular]Related 10 News video:
[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular]Southeast Airlines ceases operations [/font]



LARGO - Between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, developments went from bad to worse at Southeast Airlines headquarters.

On Tuesday evening, top managers told stunned reservations agents to go home; the airline was shutting down. The agents asked if they could call passengers and tell them to make other arrangements. They were told they could not.

Just like that, 364 people, from airline pilots to mechanics and ticket agents, became unemployed.

On Wednesday, the bad news continued. Stranded passengers learned they'd have to pay dearly to get new tickets home. Nineteen baggage handlers whose company worked exclusively for Southeast at its home base, St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport, lost their jobs.

And the paychecks Southeast issued to its own employees as it showed them the door began to bounce.

"A number of Southeast employees have come in with their paychecks, but funds to pay those checks were not available," said Jan Knowlton, vice president for marketing at United Bank in St. Petersburg. She declined to discuss details to protect Southeast's privacy.

Some employees were furious.

"You don't work 25 days and then have somebody maliciously issue you a bad check," said Denise Tuafono of St. Petersburg, a baggage manager with Southeast. "There are people here without food. Everybody's got a mortgage and car payments. There's a good way to do things and a lousy way, and this is as lousy as it gets."

Southeast customers weren't very happy, either.

"It's unconscionable for them not even to call us," said Susan Albertson, who was booked on an afternoon flight from St. Petersburg to Allentown, Pa.

Steve Mowrey, visiting Sarasota with his wife and four children, didn't know of the airline's closing, either, until he arrived for check-in. The Mowreys had paid $500 for their Southeast tickets. Some last-minute fares they found on other airlines back to Allentown shocked them.

"They want $691 per person," said Silva Mowrey, Steve's wife. "It doesn't even seem real; just 12 hours ago they were flying."

There had been signs of financial trouble for months at the charter airline. It cut its schedule dramatically in August, and unpaid bills began to mount: The airline owed $100,000 to St. Petersburg-Clearwater and hundreds of thousands of dollars to airports in Sanford and Allentown.

George Doughty, executive director at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Allentown, said Southeast was "chronically and continually" late paying bills from the airport.

"I'm not surprised fuel prices eventually ate them up," Doughty said. "But I am surprised at the time that it happened."

The bills were just the beginning.

The Federal Aviation Administration disclosed last month that it had proposed fines to the airline of more than $240,000 in connection with a series of safety violations. FAA spokesman Christopher White said Wednesday the FAA would pursue its investigations of Southeast, even if the airline files for bankruptcy.

And soaring fuel prices, which have hit all airlines hard, clobbered Southeast.

"Our fares range from $39 to $69, so you do the math," said Geri Anselmi of Palm Harbor, who had been an airport agent for Southeast. "With the price of fuel so high, nobody can make any money with fares like that."

No one in Southeast management would talk about the end of operations. Officials who emerged from the Largo headquarters Tuesday night waved off questions. Some people were inside the Belcher Road office Wednesday, but they refused to open the door.

While the end for Southeast came abruptly, it had been bucking the odds most of its five-year life. Tiny airlines without deep pockets have always struggled to survive.

"It's merely an impossibly competitive market for well-funded, established carriers," said Stuart Klaskin of KKC Aviation Consultants in Coral Gables. "It's across the line of impossibility for the micro-carriers."

Such carriers start with a couple of strikes against them: no recognizable brand and a small marketing budget to create one.

"You don't have an identity, and there's always the fear factor ... that you're not perceived as being safe," said Morton Beyer, an Arlington, Va., airline consultant who served on the board of tiny Eastwind Airlines in the late '90s.

The small carriers typically avoid going head-to-head with major airlines by flying into secondary airports without low-fare service. For Southeast, that meant Allentown instead of Philadelphia and Gary, Ind., rather than Chicago.

The game plan works if locals fly more from the hometown airport. But with major carriers now offering so many bargain tickets from nearby large cities, it can turn into disaster for tiny airlines, said Darryl Jenkins, a visiting professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach.

"The airline gods do not have a sense of humor," he said. "They tolerate no faults whatsoever."

Noah Lagos, executive director of St. Petersburg-Clearwater International, said he was working with Yellow Cab to ferry stranded passengers across Tampa Bay to Tampa International Airport where they could find alternate flights. The airport was paying the cab fares.

ATA and USA 3000 Airlines, both of which operate at the mid-Pinellas airport, said they would offer low-fare seats for passengers stranded by Southeast on a seat-available basis. AirTran Airways, which flies from Tampa International Airport, said it would take Southeast passengers on standby to airports as close as possible to their original destinations for a $50 fee plus tax.

Southeast, a privately owned airline, did not have reciprocity agreements with other airlines to honor each other's tickets. Charters generally do not have such agreements.

For the St. Petersburg-Clearwater airport itself, the loss of Southeast means the loss of 22 percent of its passenger traffic. Even with its schedule cutback last summer, Southeast was still flying 23 flights a week from the Pinellas field. The passenger count through Oct. 31 was just over 265,000.

The end of Southeast will also be a financial blow to the airport. Southeast paid about $200,000 a year in passenger fees, and the airport collected another $550,000 on such things as parking fees and concession spending.

Lagos said he knew Southeast was having financial difficulties but had "no inkling" that it was about to cease operations until he began to get late-night phone calls Tuesday and was able to reach a senior Southeast official to confirm the news.

"We've been working with a number of airlines trying to grow our market share in the bay area," Lagos said. "Some have said they wanted to wait to see what happened with (the financially troubled) ATA and Southeast.

"For us, this happened at a fortunate time of the year. The most-traveled time of the year is now through March and April, and this gives other airlines that might want to come in here time to ramp up service before the travel season ends."

Times staff writer Lauren Bayne

 

[BHS]

I for one have been through this with a couple of carriers. I would only like to say that every pilot from Southeast I had the pleasure of meeting were upstanding professional individuals. I had the pleasure of tipping a few with them in Atlantic City and wanted to say Good Luck to you all and keep a positive view. Try sending your stuff in at Ryan International I heard we might be hiring off the street!

 

[MK82Man]

Southeast leaves chaos, confusion

Customers and employees blindsided by the airline's collapse find few answers.


By JEAN HELLER and STEVE HUETTEL


​

Published December 3, 2004


LARGO - Confusion over the Southeast Airlines collapse deepened Thursday with consumers seeking refunds for worthless tickets and employees taking legal action over worthless paychecks.

Consumers expressed frustration that they were unable to find anyone who could tell them how to collect refunds for unused tickets. Even the federal agency responsible for overseeing the process was having trouble sorting things out.

And dozens of Southeast employees whose paychecks bounced this week flooded the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's office to file complaints that could lead to a criminal investigation of the airline.

The demise of the public charter airline left legal and emotional problems on several fronts, and it promises to be weeks or longer until the ramifications are clear.

Federal officials say they cannot guarantee that everyone left holding unused airline tickets will get money back, even though federal law says funds eventually should be available.

One consumer who intends to try is Mike Seip, program director for a youth swim club outside Allentown, Pa.

The club spent $9,484 for 45 tickets on Southeast for swimmers and coaches to fly to Fort Lauderdale for training later this month.

Members and friends have been unable to find out where to get a refund.

"It's very frustrating," Seip said. "Obviously, nobody has an answer at this point."

Former Southeast employees are angry.

Bruce Bartlett, chief assistant to Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe, said "a considerable number" had come in "to get the paperwork to begin the process of pressing (bad check) charges."

"We were told to expect as many as 100 more today," Bartlett said Thursday. Once the paperwork is in, he said, an attempt would be made to determine if someone at Southeast would make the checks good. If not, the matter would be referred for criminal investigation.

"There are some issues on the face of it," he said. "Whether it will end in prosecution I don't know at this point. I hope someone will make those checks good. It's astonishing that this would happen at any time, but at this time of year, so close to Christmas, it's heartbreaking."

The U.S. Department of Transportation, which writes the rules under which public charter airlines operate, including the rules that are supposed to keep passengers' ticket payments safe, said Thursday it didn't know the whole Southeast story.

Unlike scheduled airlines, which are free to use ticket payments as soon as they're received, public charters must put those payments in escrow accounts and can claim the funds generated by an individual flight only after that flight is completed.

The escrow account is supposed to be backed up by a surety bond. The bond is important to consumers because it would pay the excess if there are not sufficient funds in escrow to make ticket refunds.

"The bond is a second line of protection for the consumer," said Bill Mosley, a spokesman for DOT in Washington. "Money in escrow comes and goes. The bond is a set amount that's always there."

But is it in Southeast's case?

On Thursday, DOT officials identified Valley National Bank in New York City as the holder of the escrow account.

Southeast stated in its contract with customers that their payments were protected under a bond issued by United Bank and Trust Co. of St. Petersburg. DOT repeated that claim Thursday.

United initially disputed it.

"United Bank and Trust Company has no authority to issue surety bonds and has not issued a surety bond, or bonds, for the benefit or protection of Southeast Airlines or any of that airline's customers," the bank said in a statement posted on its Web site.

But late Thursday afternoon, senior vice president Susan Blackburn declined to say whether the information was accurate.

"We are working diligently and closely with the Department of Transportation and others to determine the appropriate procedures for claims," she said. "I'm sure everyone will be making changes and updates."

Asked about the confusion, DOT's Mosley said, "We're standing by our statement, which is the truth as we know it this afternoon." He said an investigation of Southeast is continuing.

Even if the bond exists, consumers who paid for tickets by credit card more than 60-90 days ago might have difficulty getting refunds from their credit card issuers, since refund rules set a time limit for applying for reimbursement. There was some good news for Southeast employees. The Salvation Army will try to provide toys and Christmas meals for those left in need.

Starting today,from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., former Southeast employees with children who live between Ulmerton Road and Tarpon Springs can go to the organization's office at 940 Court St. in Clearwater and sign up for toys.

To qualify, the person making application must bring proof of Southeast employment such as an ID badge or a pay stub; copies of bills, such as mortgages, rent statements and car payments to prove obligation; and Social Security cards issued to the children. Those without children can sign up for food assistance. The signup program continues next week, Monday through Wednesday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

"Someone who lives outside the North Pinellas jurisdiction should call us, and we'll give them a referral to the Salvation Army in their area," said Sharon Autry.

Anyone with questions can call Ed Langdon, the social services director, at (727) 446-4177.

Left with a ticket? Here's what to do

LARGO - For consumers left holding unused tickets or ticket credits when Southeast Airlines ceased operations this week, the U.S. Department of Transportation posted instructions Thursday for getting refunds.

There was a caveat: There are no guarantees.

Those who charged Southeast tickets to a credit card may be able to have the cost credited to their account. Write the credit card issuer and enclose a photocopy of evidence of the purchase, or indicate the price of the tickets and the date they were charged.

State that Southeast Airlines has ceased flying, you will not receive the services charged to your account, and you are requesting a credit pursuant to the Fair Credit Billing Act.

Under the law, this notice must be received by the credit card issuer no later than 60 days after the date you received the first monthly statement that listed the charge for the Southeast flight. Credit card companies, however, sometimes waive this deadline for future transportation.

If you paid for your Southeast ticket by cash or check, you should make a written request for a refund to Southeast Airlines' escrow bank and securer:

Valley National Bank

Global Escrow Services

1040 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10018-3703

Consumers also should be able to apply for refunds to the bank that issued the bond that guaranteed the escrow account, but it was unclear Thursday if such a bond had been issued, as required by federal law, and if so, by whom.\

http://www.stpetersburgtimes.com/2004/12/03/Business/Southeast_leaves_chao.shtml