Greg Chiaravalle and Clint Lang said the helicopter flight school they attended had its quirks, but they never thought the training they paid dearly to attend would suddenly disappear.
But that’s what happened last week when Silver State Helicopters shuttered all of its nearly three dozen schools nationwide, including one at the Arlington Airport. The Nevada-based company fired all employees on Super Bowl Sunday and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy the next day.
“We’re trying to pick up the pieces and finish what we started,” Lang said late last week. “It took me about a day to realize I probably won’t see my money again.”
Instructors at Snohomish County’s other helicopter training school, however, don’t want Silver State’s well-publicized financial implosion to tarnish the whole industry.
“The students are probably thinking the whole industry is crooked,” said Preston Harvey, a manager at Snohomish Flying Service, located at Harvey Field. “That’s not how it is. It’s a business where we all know each other.”
Unlike Silver State’s fast rise and fall over just eight years, the flight school at Snohomish’s Harvey Field got off the ground in 1945. Since then, it’s offered training in flying small airplanes and helicopters.
Jason Moorhead, chief helicopter flight instructor at Snohomish Flying, said he’s talked with Chiaravalle and Lang about having them complete their training there.
It turns out there is demand for trained helicopter pilots, said Greg Quast, also a helicopter instructor at Snohomish Flying.
“There’s work for helicopter pilots,” he said, adding that he thought Silver State’s marketing materials, however, overstated the demand.
It’s true, however, that there are more opportunities than 20 years ago, when a generation of military-trained helicopter pilots came out of the Vietnam War. Those pilots are retired or retiring, creating job openings, said Arnold Ebneter, a longtime flight instructor at Snohomish Flying.
But it takes plenty of study and many flight hours before a student can gain the necessary certifications from the Federal Aviation Administration to become a helicopter pilot. That’s what Silver State’s 70 or so students in Arlington hoped to gain.
Both Chiaravalle, 38, and Lang, 36, paid a total of $69,900 to Silver State during almost two years of training there. Both run their own businesses and did a bit of research before paying that sum in three installments to Silver State. Lang said Silver State’s size as a chain impressed him.
“In some ways, it seemed safer than one small school with one or two helicopters,” he said.
But the two said during their time at the Arlington school, the number of available helicopters varied from half a dozen to just three. That made it hard for students to get in their flight time.
During one stretch, Lang said, he estimated 60 percent of his scheduled flight times were canceled for one reason or another. “It was not uncommon to be scheduled seven days a week and only fly two,” Chiaravalle added.
Moorhead said Silver State’s payment policies differed from most flight schools, which have students pay only as they move through their training.
Chiaravalle and Lang both said they want to complete their training, as they were close to completing it when Silver State closed last week. They both know, however, that they have big student loans to pay off.
“I talked to the student loan company and they’re investigating,” Chiaravalle said. “They have no precedent for this. They’ve never had a school go under.”
Moorhead, meanwhile, said Silver State’s closure will put helicopter pilots and trainers out of work and have other effects on flight training businesses everywhere.
“If it was a school, one school, that would be one thing,” Moorhead said. “But this is nationwide. It’s going to ripple throughout the industry.”
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
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