Aztec Charter Trips Left to Find a Way

The skies were gray Friday for the Seniors Sunshine Club of Spring Valley.

The fun-loving group had paid Aztec Bus Lines $280 to take 46 of its members on a sightseeing tour of La Jolla and other San Diego beach areas, an outing to be crowned by dinner at the Spaghetti Factory in the Gaslamp Quarter. They were to return to Spring Valley at the sedate hour of 6:30.

Those plans went awry, though, when Aztec closed its doors without warning late Wednesday night. What’s worse, it’s likely that the Sunshine Club has lost its $280.

“The first we heard about it was on TV. No one warned us or told us anything,” said Bertha Rasmussen, 72, a member of the club who helped organize the trip. She said the club had used Aztec for at least the last five years, chartering buses from the company about six times a year.

The Sunshine Club, however, was not the only group caught short. The San Diego State University lacrosse team, which had hired Aztec to take its 35 players, coaches and a trainer to play Whittier College today, was also left groping for a replacement.

“It caught us by surprise,” said club team president Kirk Bechtel, a senior engineering student. The team had hired Aztec for the season, and to take them to four away games. Bechtel believes the team will be able to recover the $450 to $500 it was in the process of paying the company.

He is not so sure, however, of the $1,850 the team had agreed to pay Aztec for a trip to San Francisco last weekend that was canceled because of bad weather. Bechtel isn’t sure whether the university has processed the payment yet.

On Friday, the lacrosse club was able find a last-minute replacement in Kopecky Corp. Charter Buses, which will take the team to Whittier today.

Meanwhile Friday, Aztec owner James Pike of Los Angeles continued to refuse comment on his company’s sudden closure. He reportedly met with company employees about 11 p.m. Wednesday to tell them the company was closing immediately. Even though they aren’t being paid, some employees were still at work at the firm’s Spring Valley offices Friday, volunteering their help to customers who, for the most part, were just learning that their charters had been canceled.

In a letter to county officials, Pike said Aztec has filed for protection under Chapter 7 bankruptcy and is no longer in business. The company apparently filed for bankruptcy as a result of a National Labor Relations Board ruling requiring the firm to rehire 75 former employees and pay back wages that reportedly amount to several million dollars.

Other charter companies--such as Kopecky--are trying to accommodate groups that had contracts or had made plans with Aztec. But they said Friday that this is a busy time for the charter business in San Diego, and that it may be hard to find buses for all the groups that need them.

Gus Zemba, a former co-owner and Aztec president who now is co-owner and president of rival Kopecky, said he has been approached by about 20 groups, such as the lacrosse team, to provide charter buses.

“We’ve received a lot of calls from different people who have been left behind” by the Aztec closure, Zemba said. “We have a lot of our own bookings, but we’re doing everything we can.”

Chuck Ruane, owner and operator of both Goodall’s Charter Buses and Gray Line Tours, said word of Aztec going out of business is just beginning to spread, and the full impact on the local charter bus industry has yet to be felt.

Goodall’s, though, did feel one immediate effect. The company donated a bus Friday to a Headstart elementary school class in El Cajon, which had hired Aztec to take it to Sea World.