After more than four decades of serving the aviation community, Forge Flightworks announced it has closed its doors as of December 2024.
Hmmm … I’d like to know more about this sad announcement. For grins, I looked up their website and found openings for Avionics installers and repairmen, A&P’s, interior installers dated back into mid-year 2024. I’d be willing to bet they can’t find enough qualified and willing people to work? Anybody know ??
Probably pertinent to note that they filed for bankruptcy on October 4 of last year, and that there are many online complaints about work that was paid for not being performed or parts that were ordered with a deposit not being delivered.
Rumor has it that there is more than $1 million of customer money unaccounted for. If true, someone’s going to jail.
Yes, people should go to jail! I don’t know the total loss of customers like myself, but $1M wouldn’t surprise me. They filed Chapter 11 in October ‘24 and Chapter 7 last week, leaving some customers with unflyable planes, six figure investments, and nothing to show for it. The owner has apparently been struggling financially for a while and secured investors to help dig him out of the hole he dug, but when they uncovered addition, undisclosed debts, they backed out. I know someone who paid a deposit in September for avionics work not knowing the situation and Forge filed for bankruptcy two weeks later. Unbelievable!
I’m one of the customers who will lose an entire project’s worth of funding. Thankful airplane wasn’t touched and have it flyable as I sort out the next steps. Would be nice if some legal-trained Avweb reader could weigh in on how this process works…knowing that in Ch7/11 the liabilities far outweigh the assets and most of us are way down the list of claims…however the firm was cashing our checks days before filing Ch11. How much of that project $$$, from all the customers, was lost and is not even considered in the filing? End of the day very unfortunate and hope this process at least digs hard enough to find any fraud, like moving customer monies into personal accounts right before filing. Also would like to see Garmin take a stance on this as this shop was one of their big players in the mid-south and given how this played out it would have been nice to purchase equipment directly so at least the stuff shops want upfront cash for, is taken off the table and not at risk.
I’ll also add, knowing that it is likely an exercise in futility, that any customer with lost funds can file a claim in the case. These claims, even if valid, are at the bottom of the list and likely will not get paid. However…this may help the parties involved get a picture of all the funds (and missing funds).
I’m afraid you’re right about never reclaiming any of our money at this point, kjb4zzzz! We’ll be way down the list!
My plane was the last completed project when they closed down. It was picked up on 12/21, the day after they closed. They left it on the ramp. The work they did was top notch, high quality. But, it took 11 months for a new panel of Dynon and Garmin equipment. The original estimate was 4 months. They were great to deal with, except for the long time delay. I feel lucky and really feel for the unfinished projects. I hope someone good will fill the void in the same location. N80982
Sad to see a long-time company like this close. I don’t know if this played a part in the company’s demise but, as eluded to earlier, the adds posted for technicians. It appears they couldn’t keep help. I work for a major Airline and during and after Covid we lost a lot of tenured people. Since then, we and the other majors have been hiring like crazy. a lot of our new techs are coming from companies such as this. I don’t think that these companies can afford to match the pay and benefits of a major airline. My guess is they were struggling to keep good and tenured employees. This has a snowball effect with the mx facility. I hope that they don’t find fraud and it was just a struggling company that could no longer keep the doors open. Either way it sad.