Ex-airline pilot now steers people down the aisles of Home Depot
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Ex-airline pilot now steers people down the aisles of Home Depot
Toronto Star May. 11, 2002.
by Susan Pigg, business reporter
Just six months ago, Neil Sharp was captain of an Airbus A310, piloting hundreds of passengers to exotic destinations like Paris, Lisbon and the Caribbean.
Today, he steers customers through the electrical department at Oakville's Home Depot store.
Sharp is one of at least four pilots who have been honing skills of another kind at the home-renovation chain since their airline, Canada 3000, was unexpectedly grounded Nov. 9 and declared bankrupt six months ago today.
"It's a great company to work for, but it doesn't beat flying," says Sharp. "I'm there part-time and I'm grateful for the opportunity to supplement my unemployment insurance. But I'd do anything to get back into a flying job again."
It seems that just a few hundred of Canada 3000's 4,800 employees have managed to find jobs in the industry since being suddenly grounded during the worst aviation downturn in history. Sharp estimates that 150 or so of the carrier's 577 pilots are back in the cockpit — some 110 at booming Toronto-based charter service Skyservice Airlines, which has doubled in size since November.
A handful of others have moved to the Middle East to join growing airlines there that are capitalizing on the glut of highly trained, unemployed pilots. Others have abandoned flying — at least for now — and are training to be long-distance truck drivers as a backup during the cyclical downturns that have plagued the aviation industry for decades. Some are selling real estate or are financial planners.
Sharp sees hopeful signs on the horizon. Air Canada has started hiring pilots again for the first time in more than a year. Asia's Cathay Pacific dropped its hiring freeze last week. And just this week he had an e-mail saying A310 pilots are needed in Australia.
But Sharp is realistic about his own future. He hopes to be working for Skyservice in the fall, but at considerably less than the $100,000 plus he earned at Canada 3000.
"I'm coming up to 50 years old. I'm not going to be able to command the same sort of salary and level of responsibility that I was used to just months ago. I'm probably not going to be a captain again. I'm going to be earning half of what I was earning before. Even if I get back into flying as a first officer, I will need something else (a second job.) And most of my colleagues are in much the same boat."
Nearly 300 flight attendants have been hired by Skyservice on contract, some working so few hours or making so much less that they are topped up by employment insurance.
But almost all of them are haunted by the ghost of Canada 3000 and the years they spent as "family," helping the charter airline grow over almost 13 years from a two-plane operation winging vacationers to the Caribbean and Florida into a major scheduled airline.
"Do you ever get over a death in the family? That's what this is like," said Patricia Marzec, now a flight attendant with Skyservice, who worked for Canada 3000 for 12 years. "All of it happened so quickly, we didn't have time to mourn."
What made it even harder to move on were the around-the-clock efforts by co-founder and president Angus Kinnear to get Canada 3000's 38 planes airborne again.
"We could not bury the dead," said former Canada 3000 spokesperson Angela Saclamacis, who is about to start a sales job with Hard Rock Café Ltd. "We had to just keep holding on and holding on because there were signs of life."
Many employees remain so fiercely loyal to Kinnear that they've held candlelight vigils and turned down jobs at Skyservice and fast-growing WestJet Airlines, convinced still that he will resurrect Canada 3000.
"That project is closed," said Kinnear in a telephone interview this week from Pennsylvania where he is now president of upstart charter service USA3000 Airlines. "The assets have been dispersed. There is nothing there to put together. The body has been dismembered."
Next Tuesday and Wednesday, bankruptcy trustee PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. will hold creditors' meetings in Toronto and Vancouver to discuss details of the complicated bankruptcy that affected more than 200,000 passengers — some 50,000 of whom were stranded around the world when the airline was grounded — and resulted in $66 million in claims by passengers alone. More than $16 million is still owed in severance and vacation pay to employees of the airline, its vacation arm Canada 3000 Holidays, and its other divisions.
Some pilots were so keen to get back in the cockpit that they've put up $30,000 each to former Royal Aviation chief executive Michel Leblanc. He plans to launch a smaller version of Royal, which was bought by Canada 3000, along with Halifax-based CanJet Airlines, last spring.
The money is a training bond to help cover the $50,000 it can cost to revalidate or upgrade a pilot on specific aircraft types and will be repaid to the pilots over the next two years.
Others are banking on jobs with a new CanJet, which former founder Ken Rowe hopes to launch out of Halifax this summer.
Even industry veterans shake their heads remembering how just over a year ago, Skyservice was advertising in newspapers for pilots to start up its short-lived scheduled service, Roots Air, and having trouble finding takers.
But the aviation industry is full of grizzled veterans.
"We're sort of nomadic. It's not that we like that lifestyle, it's that we accept that lifestyle as part of the job that we like. We would love to work for somebody where there was going to be security, you knew there was going to be safety for the rest of your career and you could really put down roots and get settled. But always in the back of your mind is: What if?"
Sharp has worked for three now-defunct airlines — Air Toronto, Royal and Canada 3000 — since immigrating to Canada in 1987.
"I've never left one. Every one of them has left me," he says. "What else can I do? I have a passion for flying — it is really a passion. It's an addiction."
For now, Sharp takes simple joy in talking to customers and helping them find the parts they need. He's impressed by Home Depot, which employs a number of Olympic athletes.
"They pay them for 40-odd hours a week but they only have to work 20 hours a week and they get the rest to do their training. Hopefully, they'll be doing that for pilots before long," he says with a laugh.
by Susan Pigg, business reporter
Just six months ago, Neil Sharp was captain of an Airbus A310, piloting hundreds of passengers to exotic destinations like Paris, Lisbon and the Caribbean.
Today, he steers customers through the electrical department at Oakville's Home Depot store.
Sharp is one of at least four pilots who have been honing skills of another kind at the home-renovation chain since their airline, Canada 3000, was unexpectedly grounded Nov. 9 and declared bankrupt six months ago today.
"It's a great company to work for, but it doesn't beat flying," says Sharp. "I'm there part-time and I'm grateful for the opportunity to supplement my unemployment insurance. But I'd do anything to get back into a flying job again."
It seems that just a few hundred of Canada 3000's 4,800 employees have managed to find jobs in the industry since being suddenly grounded during the worst aviation downturn in history. Sharp estimates that 150 or so of the carrier's 577 pilots are back in the cockpit — some 110 at booming Toronto-based charter service Skyservice Airlines, which has doubled in size since November.
A handful of others have moved to the Middle East to join growing airlines there that are capitalizing on the glut of highly trained, unemployed pilots. Others have abandoned flying — at least for now — and are training to be long-distance truck drivers as a backup during the cyclical downturns that have plagued the aviation industry for decades. Some are selling real estate or are financial planners.
Sharp sees hopeful signs on the horizon. Air Canada has started hiring pilots again for the first time in more than a year. Asia's Cathay Pacific dropped its hiring freeze last week. And just this week he had an e-mail saying A310 pilots are needed in Australia.
But Sharp is realistic about his own future. He hopes to be working for Skyservice in the fall, but at considerably less than the $100,000 plus he earned at Canada 3000.
"I'm coming up to 50 years old. I'm not going to be able to command the same sort of salary and level of responsibility that I was used to just months ago. I'm probably not going to be a captain again. I'm going to be earning half of what I was earning before. Even if I get back into flying as a first officer, I will need something else (a second job.) And most of my colleagues are in much the same boat."
Nearly 300 flight attendants have been hired by Skyservice on contract, some working so few hours or making so much less that they are topped up by employment insurance.
But almost all of them are haunted by the ghost of Canada 3000 and the years they spent as "family," helping the charter airline grow over almost 13 years from a two-plane operation winging vacationers to the Caribbean and Florida into a major scheduled airline.
"Do you ever get over a death in the family? That's what this is like," said Patricia Marzec, now a flight attendant with Skyservice, who worked for Canada 3000 for 12 years. "All of it happened so quickly, we didn't have time to mourn."
What made it even harder to move on were the around-the-clock efforts by co-founder and president Angus Kinnear to get Canada 3000's 38 planes airborne again.
"We could not bury the dead," said former Canada 3000 spokesperson Angela Saclamacis, who is about to start a sales job with Hard Rock Café Ltd. "We had to just keep holding on and holding on because there were signs of life."
Many employees remain so fiercely loyal to Kinnear that they've held candlelight vigils and turned down jobs at Skyservice and fast-growing WestJet Airlines, convinced still that he will resurrect Canada 3000.
"That project is closed," said Kinnear in a telephone interview this week from Pennsylvania where he is now president of upstart charter service USA3000 Airlines. "The assets have been dispersed. There is nothing there to put together. The body has been dismembered."
Next Tuesday and Wednesday, bankruptcy trustee PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. will hold creditors' meetings in Toronto and Vancouver to discuss details of the complicated bankruptcy that affected more than 200,000 passengers — some 50,000 of whom were stranded around the world when the airline was grounded — and resulted in $66 million in claims by passengers alone. More than $16 million is still owed in severance and vacation pay to employees of the airline, its vacation arm Canada 3000 Holidays, and its other divisions.
Some pilots were so keen to get back in the cockpit that they've put up $30,000 each to former Royal Aviation chief executive Michel Leblanc. He plans to launch a smaller version of Royal, which was bought by Canada 3000, along with Halifax-based CanJet Airlines, last spring.
The money is a training bond to help cover the $50,000 it can cost to revalidate or upgrade a pilot on specific aircraft types and will be repaid to the pilots over the next two years.
Others are banking on jobs with a new CanJet, which former founder Ken Rowe hopes to launch out of Halifax this summer.
Even industry veterans shake their heads remembering how just over a year ago, Skyservice was advertising in newspapers for pilots to start up its short-lived scheduled service, Roots Air, and having trouble finding takers.
But the aviation industry is full of grizzled veterans.
"We're sort of nomadic. It's not that we like that lifestyle, it's that we accept that lifestyle as part of the job that we like. We would love to work for somebody where there was going to be security, you knew there was going to be safety for the rest of your career and you could really put down roots and get settled. But always in the back of your mind is: What if?"
Sharp has worked for three now-defunct airlines — Air Toronto, Royal and Canada 3000 — since immigrating to Canada in 1987.
"I've never left one. Every one of them has left me," he says. "What else can I do? I have a passion for flying — it is really a passion. It's an addiction."
For now, Sharp takes simple joy in talking to customers and helping them find the parts they need. He's impressed by Home Depot, which employs a number of Olympic athletes.
"They pay them for 40-odd hours a week but they only have to work 20 hours a week and they get the rest to do their training. Hopefully, they'll be doing that for pilots before long," he says with a laugh.
In the US, we have an A-320 Captain who flies a full schedule at a major airline, who has worked at a local Home Depot as a part-time job: he might still be there. His name is J. I've seen him at least twice at check-out.
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..... a bit like the old joke(?) that went:
Q) "What do you say when you meet a Dan Air / Air Europe pilot ?"
A) "BigMac and fries please mate."
It's a cyclic business, with peaks and troughs roughly every seven years.
Q) "What do you say when you meet a Dan Air / Air Europe pilot ?"
A) "BigMac and fries please mate."
It's a cyclic business, with peaks and troughs roughly every seven years.
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My "roomie" years back had a part-time job in Indy as a "sandwich specialist" at a Rax restauraunt, and as a CV-580 F.O....got layed off by our airline...declined recall...quote..."least I know I'll see my kids tonite" hats off to 'em all...could be all of us if the lawyers and bean-counters had their way..
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and the point of this post is what? So that the arrogant bastards can sneer at the few who have been unfortunate enough not to get back into the profession that they worked so hard to attain in the 1st instance?
I've been there, went to the bottom and got back up to the top, so just remember, what comes around goes around, and it could be you one day.
Where is all the media propaganda how pilots are all under-worked overpaid bus drivers making tens of million $$$$ a month?
Many were in this business for 5-10 years before they earned enough to get off food stamp wages.
Nobody says a word when an illiterate jock signs a $100 million contract to stand around and scratch his nuts for 3 hours a day and occasionally when he feels like it hit a small white ball.
We as pilots need a media machine to crank out the real truth about our careers and what we don't earn.
Many were in this business for 5-10 years before they earned enough to get off food stamp wages.
Nobody says a word when an illiterate jock signs a $100 million contract to stand around and scratch his nuts for 3 hours a day and occasionally when he feels like it hit a small white ball.
We as pilots need a media machine to crank out the real truth about our careers and what we don't earn.
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Hey huck know the fellow well from a former carrier, he also has a fantastic voice and years back produced an album or two...wondered where he was.....
niknak - well said, there is nothing funny about being unemployed, especially if you have been in a well paid job!
There is also the feeling of worthlessness that seems to overcome the individual - in short, it's seems to be more severe the more experienced and older you are!
Any pilot who is out of work and cannot get a flying job has all my sympathies.
There is also the feeling of worthlessness that seems to overcome the individual - in short, it's seems to be more severe the more experienced and older you are!
Any pilot who is out of work and cannot get a flying job has all my sympathies.
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Well Boys and Girls, things could be worse. You could have been a Helicopter Pilot and had to work for a living.......For sure theres no time watching the Auto Pilot and talking about the last stew you nailed......ha ha.
Just goes to show if you want to fly bad enough you will do just about anything.... Me, I just say thank you if someone tips me.. We are all Cab drivers, some Cabs just a bit bigger......
www.heliusa.com
Just goes to show if you want to fly bad enough you will do just about anything.... Me, I just say thank you if someone tips me.. We are all Cab drivers, some Cabs just a bit bigger......
www.heliusa.com
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B Sousa
A helicopter pilot that can write! Now all you have to work on is the brain engagement part, put the two together and presto - a complete thought communicated by the written word
The next few years will see an unprecedented shortage of highly skilled and experienced airmen at the airline level. Lets hope that we do not lose many of these valuable individuals in the mean time.'
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A helicopter pilot that can write! Now all you have to work on is the brain engagement part, put the two together and presto - a complete thought communicated by the written word
The next few years will see an unprecedented shortage of highly skilled and experienced airmen at the airline level. Lets hope that we do not lose many of these valuable individuals in the mean time.'
-------------------------------------------
Gatvol
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Orca. Nobody told me I had to be a Koleg grad-u-wait to post here....
We will also be losing a lot of experienced Helo Drivers, in the near future. I plan on being one of them.....
Things will adjust, even without us......
We will also be losing a lot of experienced Helo Drivers, in the near future. I plan on being one of them.....
Things will adjust, even without us......
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Skyservice are booming because they and their aircraft and crews are keeping EU crews out work.
If you are an EU national write to your MEP, or MP if you are in Britain , and complain loudly about the way Section 8 of the Immigration Act in the UK is exploited to allow non EU crews to work in the UK keeping the EU crews out of work.
If you are an EU national write to your MEP, or MP if you are in Britain , and complain loudly about the way Section 8 of the Immigration Act in the UK is exploited to allow non EU crews to work in the UK keeping the EU crews out of work.
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Back to the original post - the captain has had an e-mail about an A310 job in Australia - who for, only Ansett had them and they are no more (and most of their crews are flipping burgers or similar)
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Skyservice have 5 A320s working for Mytravel (airtours) this summer.
Their own (Canadian) busy season is winter, so have spare capacity that can cover the Mytravel peak summer requirement.
Seems like a good arrangement, unless you happen to be an EU pilot.
No prizes for guessing how many EU pilots are likeley to be going to Canada next winter.
I would have no problem if there was a reciprical agreement, but the Canadian authorities won't allow that, and in any case the Canadians are cheap.
The UK dept of Transport and CAA both apparently have no objections.
Do you?
If so write to your MP
Their own (Canadian) busy season is winter, so have spare capacity that can cover the Mytravel peak summer requirement.
Seems like a good arrangement, unless you happen to be an EU pilot.
No prizes for guessing how many EU pilots are likeley to be going to Canada next winter.
I would have no problem if there was a reciprical agreement, but the Canadian authorities won't allow that, and in any case the Canadians are cheap.
The UK dept of Transport and CAA both apparently have no objections.
Do you?
If so write to your MP