Silver State Helo's Shutdown

The way the school was structured they took 3 installmennts of 24k in 3 months. So anyone in longer than about 2 1/2 months have lost all the money they were approved for. SSH had a setup where you had a huge ground class lasting 6 weeks. If you did not score above 80% you stayed in ground longer. They then moved you to a sim and flew a little then on to the helicopter. It was an average of 7 months to solo just over a year to ppl. The research turned up about EOS th company that bought them shows they buy companies and set them up for bankruptcy which SSH did under chap 7 on Sun according to the company website. This just looks bad for all flight training. People don't seem to understand the whole pay as you go thing.
Shane
www.silverstatehelicopters.com

This is the company that purchased SSH a few months ago

http://www.eospartners.com/credit_opportunities.html
 
Straight from their website...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Maile Takashima
February 4, 2008 MassMedia Corporate Communications
(702) 433-4331
maile@massmediacc.com



Silver State Helicopters Files Chapter 7​


(Las Vegas, Nev.) – Silver State Helicopters, a privately-owned company based in Las Vegas, Nevada, filed a petition with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for relief under Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code.

The company closed all operations yesterday, February 3, 2008, at 5:33 p.m. PST. This action followed a rapid, unprecedented downturn in the U.S. credit markets, which severely curtailed the availability of student loans for the company’s flight academy students and resulted in a sharp and sudden downturn in new student enrollment.

“The decision to shut down operations was made only after the company explored its other available alternatives,” said Elizabeth Trosper, company spokesperson. “Information for former employees and students will be disseminated as it becomes available.”


###​


About Silver State Helicopters
Silver State Helicopters operated flight academies at more than thirty locations in fifteen states. Additional information will be posted on the company’s Web site at www.silverstatehelicopters.com.




Case Information​


United States Bankruptcy Court​


District of Nevada​

702-388-6708​






Case #: 08 - 10936​

Responsible Attorney:​

Jeanette McPherson​

702.228.7590​

Court Appointed Trustee:​

Jim Lisowski​

702.737.6111​



Meeting of Creditors:​

March 14, 2008​

300 Las Vegas Blvd S.​

Room # 1500​



Last day to file claim as creditor:​

6/12/2008​

Judge: The Honorable Mike Nakagawa​
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Multi-Level Marketing

You recruit people for your business model

The people that you recruit generate sales

You get a portion of their sales profits.

The people that you recruit, go and recruit more people.

Now the people that the people you recruited, recruited, generate sales.

Now you get to take a portion of the profits of both the people YOU recruited, but also from the sales that he people below you recruited.

Confusing?

Check wikipedia for MLM or Multi-Level Marketing.

Or, check Amway, or Quixtar.
 
They would shift profits from one location to another. Open the new location harvest the student loans from that location then on to the next. They never had enough helicopters or facilities for the students they had. They would overinflate the claims of the 135 ops they never had. Case in point they were all about the heli skiing op in Ogden that never flew. It amounted to a 407 with a fancy paint job thats it.
Shane
I should stop posting about this company now it is starting to be evident I hated it and think it hurt the helo industry real bad.
 
Yeah there are some. One called boat pix. And there is a tour company in la that you pay for turbine time and flying block rate for tour flights.
Shane
 
Very poor news for the entire industry. I'm not entirely surprised since everything I ever knew or heard about the company was in poor light, however my condolences go out to those will be in court for the foreseeable future trying to recoup training funds.
 
There was a segment on the local news here in LAS last night about this. Some poor guy just moved up here from Missouri and took out that 70k loan. Now he is screwed and pretty much has no place to go.
The man who owns SSH is a known shady character around Vegas. He was also part of a condo project a year ago that took its investors for a ride. They dug a whole, slapped up some concrete and that was it. The lawsuits are still filed but nothing has come of it and that was over a year ago. Good luck to the folks who lost out on this.
 
Interesting, not sure what there role is but this is from the "parent company" website. "opportunities in which we seek to exercise significant influence over the bankruptcy process for a particular company"
 
scottyboy75 said:
I should stop posting about this company now it is starting to be evident I hated it and think it hurt the helo industry real bad.
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Companies like that hurt the entire aviation industry. After schemes like this and TAB express its hard to believe if somebody is trying to give you quality instruction or just trying to take your money.
After hearing about how SSH in KPVU operated it made me skeptical and cautious when looking for fixed wing training.

I know a few people at SSH. How sad for all those students! It's sucks that some people an be so deceitful that even good people are taken.

It seems like a few winters ago a SSH helo went down in Utah lake. Apparently the instructor and student were landing on the ice, when it gave and they fell through. Global Warming might be a possibility.?.
 
While I was reading these threads one of their commercials was on T.V. (Discovery, I think) I called, no answer.
 
BenWlson said:
I heard back from my brother-in-law after he called his flight instructor. The story is that the Dallas location had a bunch of helicopters out Sunday evening when they all got the call to come back. They put all the helicopters in the hangar, told everyone to pack up their stuff, and changed the locks on the doors.

The only message to the students is that they will be contacted with information when a final decision on the future of the company has been made.
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. . .all but one! The one I would've been flying would have been in my garage until I got my money back!;)
 
I met one of their former instructors over the weekend at the airport. He said that the CFIs had "no idea" that the company was about to close, and he was shocked when it happened. Met one of his students who said that he went to two of the seminars with his wife and even searched the Internet for info but found nothing derogatory about the company so he forked over the $70K... and lost it all.

I wonder if the people in position of authority there, the managers et all could be held culpable in all this?

Silver State was topic of discussion at school the other day. The prof told the class "Never pay up front for training, because you can get to the airport to do the training and find the business you paid the money too gone". She lost $15K to a timebuilding operation once. It's sad that we have to contend with that in the industry.
 
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