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This letter will represent TIMCO's final attempt to advise the public and politicians of the continued solicitation and piracy of TIMCO's highly skilled and expensively trained employees by HondaJet.

With more than 1,800 employees in Greensboro, TIMCO continues to be one of the largest employers in the Triad, but that can be changed. TIMCO does not intend to idly sit by and be the training and recruitment vehicle for HondaJet as it uses its public-subsidized funds for purposes other than what they were intended.

We have repeatedly attempted to contact HondaJet management regarding this matter and to date have not received one return call or e-mail. This arrogance and the costs to be incurred by TIMCO to recruit and train replacement personnel weighs heavily on all of us at TIMCO, particularly in view of the record losses our customers are incurring due to skyrocketing petroleum costs.

While TIMCO steps forward and underwrites the 50-year anniversary celebration for GTCC, HondaJet utilizes its public subsidy to cause TIMCO many times our contribution to GTCC in recruiting and training costs to replace the employees targeted by HondaJet.

TIMCO needs an additional 80,000 to 100,000 square feet of off-airport manufacturing space, which we had intended to try to locate in High Point utilizing former furniture industry employees, to fill large contracts for Asian Pacific air carriers and expand our manufacturing capacity for Boeing and other original equipment manufacturers. It does not make sense for TIMCO to push forward expansion in an area (the Triad) that subsidizes foreign giants who do not bring new employment to the Triad.

The only politician who seems interested in our problem with HondaJet and understands the issues of subsidized incentives is gubernatorial candidate Bob Orr. I do not know Mr. Orr, but he is right on in his view of monetarily subsidizing global giants such as HondaJet to the detriment of North Carolina-based business entities.

In short, I am old, crusty and mad, but I will be hanged before I sit back and allow a subsidized foreign entity to cut its costs by stealing from TIMCO. I realize that these initial raids are only the beginning of what we can expect from HondaJet as they move toward production of their minijet.

Accordingly, I will now be forced to consider TIMCO's expansion away from the Triad where I must compete for labor with a North Carolina state and locally subsidized, foreign giant who will probably never reach employee levels that TIMCO now provides to the Triad area (see News & Record article on Feb. 8, 2007.)

Thus the question is back in the hands of the politicians who negotiated this subsidized fiasco.

I hope all North Carolina voters will consider carefully who they are sending to Raleigh and Washington. Don't send the pretty people with the eloquent oratories; send people who follow the TIMCO vow of the "fanatical pursuit of common sense" every day.

Common sense does not allow state and local funds to be allocated to foreign giants to the detriment of currently based North Carolina employers.

John R. Cawthron is chairman and chief executive of TIMCO Aviation Services Co. He moved to Greensboro in February 2006, from Waco, Texas, to reorganize TIMCO into the largest maintenance and repair provider in the United States.