Fort Worth aviation company may cut jobs due to lack of COVID aid, leadership says
Aviation Technical Services may be too big — and too small — for federal COVID-19 assistance, the company’s leadership says.
The company, also known as ATS, specializes in the maintenance, repair and overhaul of airplane parts for customers large and small. ATS has six Dallas-Fort Worth locations, including an aircraft components factory just south of DFW Airport in Fort Worth.
The company has already furloughed about 300 of its 1,600 workers nationwide — including 59 workers in North Texas — as well as about 150 contract workers. And, ATS may have to cut many more jobs soon, if the company doesn’t get federal assistance, the company’s chief executive said.
“At this point, we are kind of operating as a cash-in cash-out business,” said Matt Yerbic, the CEO and co-owner of the company since 2013. “If there are no changes in revenue, we will have to make corresponding changes in staffing. That’s the brutal facts right now.”
ATS’ customers include American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and other carriers that are benefiting from $58 billion in federal aid related to the pandemic shutdown.
The company is headquartered in Everett, Wash., and also has large aircraft parts repair and supply shops in the Kansas City area and Dallas-Fort Worth.
Most of its customers are flying only a fraction of their airplanes, which means fewer orders are coming in for parts and overhauls, company officials said.
“We are still getting the products in the door, but the customers are holding them at this time. They don’t want them repaired yet,” said Craig Kerns, ATS operations supervisor at the company’s Fort Worth location just south of DFW Airport.
At a time when the federal government is spending trillions of dollars to keep small businesses going during the pandemic, and also providing the largest major airlines with a safety net while their planes are parked, ATS is an example of a company that seems to be caught somewhere in the middle.
ATS isn’t considered a small business. The privately-held firm has too many employees and too much revenue for that designation.
But ATS also isn’t big enough to have champions on Capitol Hill — unlike the industry giants such as Boeing Co., United Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
So, the company’s leadership and its workers just hope they can stay in the game long enough to see the end of this coronavirus-fueled economic downturn.
Working at a steady pace
One of ATS’ six North Texas facilities is just south of DFW Airport, along Trinity Boulevard in Fort Worth, not far from the Trinity Railway Express’ train station at Centreport. There, on a recent weekday afternoon, about four dozen workers could be see repairing flaps, valves and other aircraft components.
One group gave a wing a shiny new coat of red in a paint booth, while nearby others retrieved a part from a treating oven. ATS also has its own tooling shop, although on this weekday morning no one was working in there.
Elsewhere in the ATS facility, which is about the size of a Target store, the pace of work was steady. Still, overall the activity was fraction of what would have been considered normal prior to the coronavirus, workers said.
“A lot of them have been furloughed,” aircraft mechanic Hector Ramirez said when asked about the small number of people working on the floor during a recent visit to the Fort Worth facility. “We do a lot of work behind the scenes.”
In Dallas-Fort Worth, ATS has furloughed about 59 of its 225 employees.
The company has sought financial help directly from the Treasury Department, but hasn’t received a response during the past five or six weeks, company officials said. ATS leaders also are contacting elected federal representatives in all the states the company operates in, to see what other help may be available.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Stimulus Act allows for direct federal loans for mid-size businesses of between 500 and 10,000 employees. ATS officials said they applied for this aid and are awaiting a response.
ATS officials declined to specify how much federal aid they were seeking.
Family atmosphere
At the Fort Worth facility south of DFW Airport, Valerie Hirshman, senior director of properties and corporate security, said the employees who were furloughed and those who remain are all part of a close-knit group.
“The aviation world has a lot more than just airlines out there,” Hirshman said. “There’s a lot of supply chain and support folks like us that do the maintenance.”
“It’s tough on everybody,” Hirshman said. “We’re hoping we can help the airlines get back, so we can bring our family back.”
This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 5:30 AM.
