Meeting Update:
I was able to attend the meeting last night and will do my best to recap it for those of you who could not attend. I will try and leave personal feelings out of it, at least until maybe the end. The meeting ended up starting at around 7:30 and there was a pretty good showing. I would estimate around 40 people. The meeting opened up with Tony (Marketing) introducing the BLTA Team. Basically giving a resume for each team member. Next was Igor briefly speaking but offered little substance in my opinion? I get the feeling that public speaking may not be his forte. He did mention that they were again excited because supposedly they were just notified, I think yesterday, that they have been “Fast Tracked” by the FAA. Not really sure what that really means other than the fact that there is once again supposedly a dedicated team assigned by the FAA to work with them which should help move things along quicker than they have been. If I can try to quote ID, I think his exact words were “The FAA is taking a more aggressive approach to the process and sufficient resources are being dedicated to Baltia”. Form you own opinions on this. I have strong ones, but I promised I would leave personal feelings out.
After Igor, another gentleman came up, but his name and title escape me, he spent time running through the timeline of events that still need to happen. All of which in his opinion will be relatively quick to get through after manual approval. They are: Manual Approval, training for pilots, & all flight personnel (which will take approx. 6 weeks), Table Top Exercises with the FAA (basically FAA gives them a scenario and the BLTA team will need to show where in the manual addresses the procedure for every group that would be affected by the scenario, basically role playing), Mini-Evac Testing & Proving Flights (75hrs worth). After these steps have been successfully completed the FAA will issue the Air Carrier Cert. Some of these steps can go on simultaneously. They burn through approx. $147K per day on rent, utilities, office supplies, aircraft ins., legal expenses & misc. expenses.
Next up was BC, basically giving props to Igor, the Baltia team and the shareholders for their support. He laid out the new PP offering which is 500,000 at $0.02, 100,000 Warrants @ $.08 good for 2 years, 2 Free Tix per year for 3 years and a model Blta plane. BC also threw out his guesstimate at of share price at take-off of between $.40-$.80. God I hope he has some real basis for that projection. I think we would all be more than happy. BC also stated that there is a commitment to a windfall of money from some Russian banker (s) once they obtain approval.
After BC came the Q&A session with BC fielding most questions. I again have strong opinions about the answers and sometimes a lack of responses I felt confident in. But again, I promised. I will attempt to summarize most of the questions, or should I say the answers. I think you can figure out the questions. Kinda like Jeopardy.
There were a few surrounding the shares outstanding, which we already know, how many shares are held by Mgmt. , I think 60%. The BLTA shares are/were restricted but the restriction window has expired. They do have to disclose when they are selling any shares. Don’t know the official form or language, but I am sure you savvy investors do. The 30 day timeframe for approval is a BLTA timeframe not something the FAA gave them. The plane does still need another “C” check but not nearly to the degree of the 1st one. They don’t know the cost for this. The plane will sit where it is until sometime after the approval due to the fact that it is much cheaper to keep it there then JFK. They claim there are no financial stipulations from the FAA required for approval (not sure I felt real confident in this answer). Based on the history with the FAA to date, tried to get a feeling for the FAA timeframe to schedule and get through the tasks listed above after manual approval. The only answer was relatively quickly. Ughh! I believe the response was that there was no response back yet from the FAA to the answers to the questions that were submitted. If you are so close, why won’t the Russian Banker kick-in now? Supposedly they have already supplied funding in the past and have gone conservative until they see results. Sounds like most of us! There were a couple of what I would call silly questions. Like how much money are you looking for tonight. As much as anyone wants to give. Duh! How much money do you have in the bank. BC’s answer was is changes daily. What about today? IDK maybe $100k.
Bottom line is that the meeting did not offer much more than we already know. Manuals still not approved & money needed. Igor and team did throw out an anticipated timeframe of 30-40 days based on this “Fast Track”. Which I think we heard already happened months, or even longer, ago. He also stated to me personally that he has high hopes of getting a plane in the air before the end of the year. (I tend to doubt it, but that’s me). Money is still an issue and they continue to try and raise it to continue to stay afloat. That’s about it. It’s the best I can do. I hope that helped a little bit anyway. If I remember anything else I will post it.
Now my very brief personal opinions: Strong dedicated team, not a scam, I get the feeling that they are sometimes not forthright with some information related to the process. They are scared to rattle anymore cages at the FAA because they feel they are in a good place with them now, they will get approved, don’t necessarily believe the timeframe quoted above, but then again I am at the 30,000 foot level. Spoke with some of the other BLTA team members, other than the usual cast, and found them intelligent and actually did feel more confident on our chances of getting this done.
OMG. I just reread this and I am starting to sound like LT. WTF!
