When former Midway flight attendant Gwen Savoy went to Target to pick up some air conditioning filters, she wasn't prepared for what she'd see. Seeking help from a store employee, she was greeted by a former Midway pilot.
"It was shocking to me," said Savoy of the pilot's new employment. "When we had flown together, he was like family to me."
Savoy's experience is becoming all the more common in the Triangle. With the airline industry hit hard by the Sept. 11 attacks, many airlines have had to make changes and let go of employees. Few, however, have been affected as much as Raleigh-Durham's resident airline, Midway.
Sept. 12, the very next day, Midway Airlines closed its doors. The small carrier based out of Morrisville, N.C., had already been struggling and the financial shock produced by the attack was just too much. The airline laid off 1,700 employees--in addition to the 700 it had already laid off when declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy the month before--most of whom are Triangle residents.
That wasn't the end of the story for Midway, however. At the end of November, the carrier was notified that the government had approved a bailout scheme for Midway, but was giving the airline only a fraction of what it would take to hire back all of its employees.
The $12.5 million package allows the company to lease up to four Boeing 737s and resume service to about a half dozen destinations. The airline currently plans to hire back 75 people, in addition to the 75 it had retained originally, with expectations of adding two planes to its fleet and about 250 more employees by March.
But where does that leave the other 2,000 employees? Savoy spent three months after the attacks trying to find a way back into the airline industry, but finally began to accept that she would have to move on.
"It takes a long time," she says. "I applied to every airline out there, even foreign carriers. No one's hiring."
Most of those 2,000 laid off Midway workers will have to face the prospect of changing careers. Switching career paths, however, can be tough for people in this industry, particularly pilots, says Ken Dillo, director of business and industry training at Wake Technical Community College.
"They're scared to death of changing industries," he says. "Airline people are airline people."
Dillo organized two seminars in October specifically targeted at helping former Midway employees get back on their feet. He says many of those people had not gone through the job search process for some time and needed help revising their rZ
"We tried to give them a perspective outside of the airline industry... and we attempted to take their airline skill sets and apply it to some other industry," says Dillo.
He feels the seminar was an overall success, adding that it got excellent evaluations from everyone in attendance. Many even remarked that they wished their friends had participated as well.
One of the seminar attendees was Joyce Wlodarczyk, former president of the local council of the Association of Flight Attendants. She had high praise for the program, saying that the material was "emotionally comforting as well as tangibly important."
Even so, Wlodarczyk has had a tough time with her job search. She'd been with Midway for over six years, and says that changing careers at age 39 will be difficult. She describes her search with such varied adjectives as "daunting," "overwhelming" and "encouraging," but says overall each day of her search has been worse than her worst day in the air.
Wlodarczyk has been to four airline open houses, and was encouraged when another small air carrier, AirTran, showed interest in her rZ
She has since decided to enroll in a law enforcement certification class in hopes of pursuing a new career. It won't be the same as working for the airline industry though.
"It's an incredible lifestyle, and that's why we miss it so much," she says.
Still, some employees remain upset about the way they were treated when the airline went under. Savoy, the union secretary for the Association of Flight Attendants, says employees had to find out from a news ticker that they'd lost their jobs, leaving most of the employees "absolutely alienated."
Savoy is also upset about the way in which she says Midway will go about rehiring workers. She says they plan to rehire flight attendants based on merit, which is a blow to those who've established seniority.
"The airline has always played favorites," she adds. "They don't care about their employees." Midway declined to comment on the story.
Savoy, whose husband also worked for Midway as a ramp technician, cites Midway's expansion path as another example of poor employee treatment. Before facing bankruptcy earlier this year, the airline had experienced some revenue growth, but decided to use it to expand at "an unhealthy rate" instead of increasing employee pay, she says.
For Wlodarczyk, however, her worst Midway experiences came toward the end, due to the airline's lack of communication.
"We had no idea anything was wrong until the company filed for Chapter 11," she says, describing the experience as "an emotional hammer in the face."
She says that even now, when employees call up to find out information about the future of the company, they are greeted with a recording that simply tells them to leave their name and number if they're interested in returning to work with Midway.
Savoy, however, says Midway's communication with former employees has been helpful.
She says employees were given the option of providing the airline with an e-mail address, and she's gotten about four e-mails from Midway with extensive information on training and possible new job contacts.
Regardless of Midway's efforts, it remains unlikely that all of the company's employees will be able to find a new job in the airline industry. Savoy says that a recent industry job fair was "a total flop" because there were just so many Midway employees there. She has since enlisted the help of a JobLink Career Center, which she describes as "an incredible facility" with plenty of individual attention. Wlodarczyk has also gone to JobLink for help, and she says the service is even paying for the law enforcement course she is taking.
Meanwhile, Dillo's department at Wake Tech has developed another training program, in conjunction with the North Carolina Employment Security Commission. There will be a continuing program of three-day sessions, with the first starting this month.
The new program will be based on the original one held for Midway employees in October and is free for anyone collecting unemployment compensation, regardless of former experience.
Dillo says that it's a response to the fact that Wake County currently has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state, due in no small part to the Midway closing.
For now, many of those employees from the Triangle will be hoping for a call to return to their former Midway posts. Wlodarczyk is optimistic about the company's future because of a change in strategy.
She cites the airline's new focus on low-cost leisure tickets, as opposed to its former concentration on business travelers.
Despite the hardships Triangle-area Midway employees continue to face, their devotion to the company remains a hopeful sign of its ability to recover. Even toward the end, employees remained committed to keeping the airline afloat.
Despite rumors of job cuts, in the end "the front-line employees went into overdrive, desperately trying to make the airline work," Wlodarczyk says.
And she says that after the airline finally closed its doors, the former flight attendants had a picnic at a Morrisville park in an attempt to gain closure. But many still have not lost their loyalty to the company.
As Wlodarczyk says: "If people got a call to come back they'd say, OWhen, right now? I'll be there.'"
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