... Yawn ..

With all the 'fantastic' pilots on here with great and postive things
to forward onto others, has it dawned on anyone to actual phone
and find out if anything is still flying.

...

I did ... :8

And? What were you told? :hmm:

I'm going to go for a check on a 300 next month.

I am sure that plenty of Rotorheads will be pleased to hear that.

Both those who want to train on 300s (are you out there, cormac?) and those who are still owed money...

Rumour has it, Bill is doing some teaching at a helicopter schoolnear Jerez, Spain. Dunno the name of the school, but there can't be too many down there.

MD :ok:

As I understand it, people who are owed money are being told that money went to "the old company" and if they want to fly, then they have to pay money to "the new company".

Yet another company
 

Also check out Heli Consultants Limited.

Is that being done by Atlas or some other RTF/FTO?

There is no FTO/TRTO there. Its a 'registered facilty' only.

Do you know how many are owed money and who they are also what can be done about.

If the rumours are to be believed... quite a lot of people are owed a lot of money.

Not something i'm overly familiar with, but isn't the procedure here a winding up order - recently made famous by the crowd that tried to do it to HBOS as a lever to extract charge refunds!

Even if you get a company wound up, if they have no money or assets, or have transferred or 'sold' their assets to a 'new' company, you won't get any money. Plus it will cost you legal/lawyer fees to do this. Very frustrating for people who are owed money.

According to the accounts at company house they are not wound up yet nor are the other companys linked. So would that entitle you to keep flying to burn off hours owed or is that it?

As manfromuncle described, if the company has sold its assets and has no money there is little that you can do. If they no longer own/operate the helicopters then what are you going to fly ?
Instead of a winding up order you could try the small claims court. This route is less expensive (£100 or so to put your case and then another similar fee for enforcement). However the most aggressive utcome of this is that the court sends in balifs and if they have no assets to seize then you have wasted your time/money.
Sadly, if a limited company runs out of money there is little that can be done (unless there has been some illegality and you have grounds to sue a director). If you have paid upf for hours in advance then you have done little more than lent them money.

Yes, try the small claims court. Or maybe this, if you have paid money, but not received services (ie flying)

http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/cgi-bin/callist.cgi

Or this

http://www.insolvency.gov.uk/guidanc...upacompany.htm


Good luck!

Ahh, the small claim's court. How many pilot's have trod the path to the small claims court against their former employers. If I only had a pound .......
Honestly the cheques in the post, yep posted it yesterday.
The words still haunt me to this day...
only in this game, with so called established training organisations.
My god I'm having a negative monday :}

A word of advise for anybody using the SCC:
If you get a judgement in your favour, do not wait for a few weeks to see if the defendant pays up but go straight to enforcement. If a company knows that they have a court judgement against them then they may start to 'move' assets. The sooner that you can get the balifs in the better. They may still get nothing but at least you have given it your best shot.

Stories like this ought to serve as a warning for the many people that pay for large chunks of hours up front. In doing so you are simply making a loan to the company and accepting interest in the form of a reduced hourly rate. First you should ask whay a company does not want to borrow from the bank and second you should think what your reply would be if you were just asked to make them a loan. Sadly, warm feelings of going flying can sometimes override our more headstrong side.

One point to bear in mind is if you paid for your hours by credit card then you may be able to enlist the card company to help you get the money back. (This does not apply so well to debit cards).

TB

Just to point out that the credit card pays only out if the transaction happened in the last three months.