I can't give you much on the roster and terms. That is kept from those of us at Atlas Air, Inc. which it's holding company (AAWWH) own's 49% of GSS. The other 51% was donated by Atlas Air World Wide Holdings to an EU citizen. His name eludes me at the moment (?James Porter?). Probably was done to meet the requirement of EU ownership requirement for the certificate. Everything material is leased from Atlas Air Worldwide holdings(A/C, Parts, Dispatching, and a few other things) to GSS. GSS gets wet leased by BA for cargo operations Atlas was doing originally. AAWWH gets the same contracts they had before, they just jumped through some extra hoops, spent some more money, upstream the funds back and now have mostly EU's flying it instead. As I understand it now, the BA pilot group gets to bid into GSS upgrades and flying. So hiring off the street may result in you pulling the gear for a long time. That's a complaint I have heard from a GSS f/o. That's unless you are a BA guy bidding over.
GSS was an outcropping from Atlas Air Crew Services (AACS) a crew leasing company which was formed in STN by AAWWH immediately after the Atlas Air Pilot group unionized and the UK law required the wet leasing with BA to stop unless on a EU certificate. So while AAWWH expanded AACS in STN to act as leased replacement pilots against the newly formed pilot union at Atlas Air, the holding company began work on starting the GSS certificate when the UK decided AACS was not satisfactory for meeting the wet leasing requirements under its law. So AACS, originally was set up for killing two birds with one stone was now down to just being a crew leasing company formed to act as managements leverage (union busting) against a newly unionized pilot group at Atlas Air and to train those that would be going over to GSS as initial cadre.
I believe they currently have 3 747-400s. I think they were talking about adding another, but I don't know how that worked out.
During the Polar strike, GSS was scheduled to acquire 4 747-400s of Polar's (A/C and Polar Owned by AAWWH) and the original GSS A/C would be moved back to Atlas Air, Inc. A dog and pony show to circumvent certain sections of US law and side step the Atlas Pilots union contract on supporting the Polar strike. I think they called it project "Granit" from what the management staff has told me post strike. In the end, Atlas Air pilots support for Polar helped end that eventuality thus the transfers never came to be.
Hopefully that will give you an overview of what you would be dealing with.
Last edited by mercpc9; 1st August 2006 at 23:38.