THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 9, 1994 TAG: 9412090557
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 45 lines
Flight International Group Inc. announced that it emerged from bankruptcy Thursday, ten months and four days after it sought protection from its creditors.
A federal bankruptcy court judge in Newport News confirmed the completion of the financial reorganization of the aviation-services company and three of its subsidiaries.
Newport News-based Flight International employs 135 people at its facility there and in other locations in the United States and Europe.
Best known for using modified business jets to mimic enemy fighters in military training exercises, Flight International has shifted its focus in part to aircraft maintenance. A little more than 50 percent of its business is in military flight operations.
``We have now cleaned the balance sheet and the company can go into the future with no excess baggage,'' said David E. Sandlin, chairman and president of Flight International.
Flight International is retaining $8 million of long-term secured debt. Unsecured creditors holding $28 million worth of claims get 51 percent of the company's newly issued stock.
Sandlin and John Bone, a business of Sandlin's, bought 29 percent of the newly issued stock for $290,000.
Sandlin was a consultant from Georgia whom Flight International's board named chairman and president nearly two months after the company entered bankruptcy in February. He had been president of Flight's sales and leasing subsidiary during the 1980s.
Former stockholders in the company got 10 percent of the newly issued stock and the remaining 10 percent was reserved for management.
Unsecured creditors with claims less than $2,000 got 10 cents on the dollar.
Now that it has shed its debt, Flight International should turn a modest profit in its first year out of bankruptcy, said Wayne Richmon, the firm's chief financial officer. by CNB