Pace Airlines loses contract with Continental Airlines

By: Richard Craver | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: August 31, 2009

As rumors of new ownership swirl around Pace Airlines, the maintenance company has lost a major contract with Continental Airlines.
Pace, a charter airline and third-party maintenance company, has maintenance and training operations at Smith Reynolds Airport. Pace also has operations in Atlantic City, N.J., and Dallas.
In December 2007, Pace landed the contact to perform heavy-maintenance checks on some of Continental's 737-300 and 737-500 aircraft. It also provided installation work for telecommunication devices.
Continental has ended its business agreement with Pace, Continental spokeswoman Julie King said today.
King said she did not know how big a maintenance contract it was for Continental.
Pace employees who contacted the Winston-Salem Journal said they believed the contract was slated to run through at least the end of 2010 and involved maintenance of more than 100 aircraft.
The sources did not want to be identified for fear of their or a family member's losing a job.
When Pace announced the contract, it said it would hire about 70 employees to handle the extra business. The company is estimated to have more than 400 full- and part-time employees, including about 300 locally.
Bill Rodgers, an entrepreneur, aviation expert and sports enthusiast from Kansas City, bought Pace in June. Neither he nor Darrell Richardson, the company's president and chief operating officer, responded to requests for an interview.
Employees said that Rodgers held a brief meeting with employees today to say that the company is attempting to secure financing for its operations. Employees said they were told last week that a sale was likely to occur soon.
The employees also said they have not received a paycheck for the two-week period that ended last Friday. They were paid early last week for the two-week period that ended Aug. 14.
The N.C. Labor Department said on Aug. 21 that it had opened an investigation of Pace related to at least four employee complaints about not being paid so far this month.
Besides the maintenance work, Pace also uses the airport as a base for its own charter-airline service with a fleet of seven planes that it owns or operates.