Re: Public Appeal to user: ERJ-135-ATA\'s Gary Grell
Flewa72 & Marcus
I will agree that the academy extended the times for ASII in an effort to keep students as ready as possible for the interview when and if it took place. It was in the student’s best interest, to extend the training in expectations of airline increasing their hire rates. Would you have been ready if you did finish in the 10 months listed time period and it was 6 months thereafter before you were called for the airline interview? Most students would not be ready. The hiring rate at the regionals was very slow, but it did exist.
What the academy management (Rob Williams, ASII Mgr.) should have done is be up-front with the time period, and why it was extended. It is in your best interest to be as interview and jet-sim ready as possible. You would be saying the same thing if you had finished in the 10 months, waited another 6 months for the interview and failed the interview. Would you blame the school because they finished you early and you had to wait to long? It is the airline down turn that is to blame. Can you tell us what the hiring is going to be in the next 10 to 12 months? I don’t think so. A lot had to do with looking ahead. The airlines had started the hiring, back in July of “02”, and then it slowed to zero. The United Airline’s pending and eventual bankruptcy put a hold on ACA receiving the new RJ’s as planned and it put a stop on new hires. Are the former ATA students, now furloughed at ACA, blaming the school for being furloughed? Again, it was a gamble, and unfortunately ATA, employees and its students lost.
The school could not shut down until the airlines recovered. No one knew what the airline situation was until much later after the 9/11 tragedy. In order to keep up enrollment and keep the school operating, a refund promotion was started for those students that enrolled during a specific time period. The students had a refund clause statement in the contract that granted a refund for the cost of ASII if the student did not receive an interview with a regional airline within 45 days of finishing ASII. This was a promotional program that worked as long as the hiring rates picked up. Another promotional program that was used is the additional flight and ground training for the CFI/II Certificates without additional cost to the student. It would give the students the opportunity to remain current, while teaching, if the airlines did not show any hiring at the time the student completed training.
Students had a choice to enroll and take the chance that the airlines would be hiring when they finished. The choice you made is one that was not up to ATA. Steve and I only presented the existing program at the time you enrolled. There were more potential students that chose to wait then there were students that enrolled. Can you tell me what the hire rates are going to be at the regional airlines in the summer of 2004? You can’t and the school could not either. You would praise the school if you finished on time and was hired. You blame the school for extending the time to finish. It was in your best interest that ATA held you back.
I stayed with the school until the very end because of a belief of a potential airline recovery. I do not blame the school for all that happened. Students and employees of ATA are now casualties of the 9/11 tragedy. I feel bad about being kept in the dark and not knowing the school’s actual money situation. If Steve and I had known how bad things really were, we would have worked 7 days a week until we had recovered. Steve and I weren’t paid for working on the weekends or past normal working hours. The academy hired an extra Training Coordinator, the last open week, to help, but it was too late. The academy paid for new ads, but it was too late. We had talked about rotating nights and Saturday’s in an effort to talk with prospective students. The timing was off by only a month or maybe two. The new aviation magazine ads would have generated more brochure requests and possibly more enrolled students. It would have helped the academy remain in operation until the airlines started to recover. Again, it was all projected on the airlines recovery. The existing war, that the USA is undergoing, had more to do with ATA closing than the 9/11 tragedy. The doom and gloom that the media plays is more to blame than the 9/11 tragedy.