Airline shutdown causes delays for troops

[unhappycamper]

Longer waits
Bankruptcy causes logistical problem.


Airline shutdown causes delays for troops
By Seamus O’Connor - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Apr 24, 2008 19:43:36 EDT

The shutdown of ATA Airlines is creating problems for service members after all.

Despite promises to the contrary, troops are waiting in Kuwait longer than necessary before they can come home from the war zone.

ATA was under contract to provide 70 military charter flights through September when it abruptly shut down April 3, a day after its second bankruptcy filing in about three years. The airline provided the flights as part of the FedEx Teaming Arrangement, an eight-airline group, but FedEx had informed ATA that it would be ousted from the group in October, the start of fiscal year 2009.

In an April 10 interview, FedEx spokeswoman Sandra Munoz said all of ATA’s flights would be honored by the FedEx team, but, The State newspaper of South Carolina reported April 17 that the Army National Guard’s 218th Brigade Combat Team’s flight home from Kuwait was being delayed in connection with logistical problems stemming from the ATA shutdown.

Army Lt. Col. Frederick Rice, a spokesman for U.S. Transportation Command, which overseas military charter flights, confirmed that redeployment flights from Kuwait are expected to be delayed two to six days for the next several weeks. “The impact on the system is being felt throughout the system,” Rice said, including deployment and other flights.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/army_transcom_ata_042408w/