Check it.
Gary Richards, our president, founded Amflight (which was called something else back in the day, California Air Charter or something like that?) in 1968 flying an Aero Commander around I believe.
In 1971 he sold the company to ATI, but continued to run the company, but for as long as anybody has known Ameriflight, it's been a subsidary of ATI Systems International (the armored car guys, not the other freight company).
Fast forward to February 25th, 2007 - A Canadian company buys ATI Systems International and we're forced to be spun off because a foreign company can't own a United States based airline.
So it was probably either that Amflight was liquidated or Gary Richards bought us back. Even though Gary Richards has run the company the entire time we've been in business, from 1971 to 2007 ATI Systems International owned Amflight.
Now Gary Richards is the owner of Amerflight, in addition to running the company. Some people are saying this will allow more flexibility in what we can do here at Amflight because we don't have to get everything OKed by ATI, but at the same time it makes us a MUCH smaller company. Even though we're largest part 135 company in the country with something like 200 aircraft, our corporate footprint if you will is much smaller now.
There are other rumors flying around about whether this is good or bad, which I'm not going to comment on beacuse I don't have a clue. I know that historically, when a company changes hands the pilots generally get screwed, but that doesn't have to happen here. Gary Richards IS one hell of a smart guy, so we'll see where he takes us now that he doesn't have anybody telling him what to do.
