I'll take this one......
ABX Air does not have any dispatchers (correct term is flight controllers within the company) on property anymore. They started a contract company, fired everyone as ABX employees, then hired everyone back as contract flight controllers at a reduced wage.
Air Transport International has maintained in-house flight controllers for years even as the OCC in Little Rock was always a bone of contention within the company. ATI has the provision in the GOM for contract dispatch and it would be cheaper to contract it out to ABX Air's company. Yet it always has survived (albeit a skeleton crew now).
When ATI and Capital Cargo merged, ATI was suppose to start dispatching/flight following all of the Capital Cargo operations. Then it was deemed that it would cost to much and all the Capital stuff was awarded to ABX Air.
Now that it looks imminent that ATI and ABX will merge in the near future, ATSG and ATI is moving the Little Rock OCC operations to ILN and it will be housed in the same building as ABX Air's dispatch company. The move was suppose to be in December (announced three weeks before the move) but then was been pushed back to January.
Where I'm going with this is out of all the current flight controllers at ATI, only one person accepted the move to ILN. There are a few people on furlough from ATI but "we" officially do not have "official" recall rights. So what I think is going to happen is the one employee who accepted the move will be hired in at ABX and the in-house dispatch at ATI will finally be contracted out. It is a lot easier to hire one person into ABX then hire at least seven people at ATI. ABX Air's contract operations is fairly automated as well so they should have very little trouble accepting the additional Capital and ATI flying. Maybe one or two additional positions required at most.
However, the ATI theory is just speculation based on my experiences. Could be wrong but it only makes sense since only one person is moving with the OCC to ILN.
Kind of random that you posted this on APC and not Jetcareers in their dispatcher section.
Last edited by NCR757dxr; 12-17-2012 at 02:21 PM.