After I received the call I only had about two and a half hours to do something - which wasn't enough time at all. The club was shut down that fast because the CO so ordered. The CO of a base or ship is a demigod and does have the power and authority to do stuff like this. In this case the club has had problems for at least a year and I'm under the impression that the command was just waiting for one more issue to justify closing the club. As the story goes someone had concerns about the club and could not be satisfied at the club level, so these concerns were passed up the chain of command. When the CO heard about them he dropped the axe then and there. Now this is heresay and there is far more to the story than what I'm aware of but this is the gist of things.

This is not a calamity for me since my plane didn't make much money, it's just a big hassle to now arrange insurance to get the plane flown out of the base. If I was given an earlier notice then there would have been time to have the plane flown out while still on club insurance. I'm also not sure of the legal ramifications of this. The navy has the right to close the club but I also have a contract with the navy and closing the club may be in violation of my contract.

The real victims are, of course, the club members - especially the student pilots. They not only have to now join another club (which may be considerablly farther away) to continue flying but the students will also now have to find new instructors - unless they can get their old ones to join a new club also. It's just a big mess that was not handled well at all.