CABAIR - General discussion for those involved.

[chrisbl]

I have heard that what finally sent Cabair under was a winding up order for about £40,000 from a company called "Abraxas Aviation", for "consultancy services"

And you can see who the company director of Abraxas was! (The man who was escorted from the buiding at Elstree and did very well out of the whole deal.)

Stephen John Read - Who runs it?

You couldn't make it up...

He has been involved with Abraxas since 1992 so I suspect that rather than being on the regular payroll, he gets paid consultancy fees into his company and then either pays himself a salary from that or a dividend.
There is nothing wrong with that and it happens all the time. I suspect a lot of freelance pilots operate that way.

I presume once he fell out with them he wanted paying for what was owed, it probably was a valid claim otherwise Cabair would have fought it but for the fact that they were out of cash.

Sometimes you can read too much into things and go off on the wrong track. It does not excuse the fact that Cabair was shaky and making unrealistic claims up to the end. If a £40k debt pushed them over the edge, then they were well short of having a well financed model.

Once one creditor scents blood they all come out, credit is restricted, aircraft chained up until fuel bills are paid, students sent on "study leave" etc etc all with the impact that has on the image and reputation of the organisation.

The problem with wannabe pilots is that they are blind to all of this, they see only the uniforms, the gold bars, listen to sales pitch (polite reference to what comes out of a bull's bum) have the dream of being in the right hand seat of an A320 in 2 years and all that and stump up £70k. The parents are just as bad for not doing a proper due diligence as well. You would not buy a property without proper survey, why make such an investment without proper research.

What really irritates me about this training market is the economy with the truth and the misleading use of statistics. The greatest demand for pilots is in the Far East where being Indian, Indonesian or Chinese counts. Using global numbers and using that as a sales pitch to flog EU training is just rubbish unless of course you are Indian, Indonesian and Chinese.

I cannot believe that people are seriously considering Cabair, and I feel sorry for some of the excellent training staff there.

An old Chinese proverb goes something like this: a good predictor of the future is usually the past.

How often do we see history repeat itself?

Just my 2p worth.