One thing to mention. At the time NWA put money into the group taking control of Midwest to block airtran Delta was not in favor of that. In fact I heard Delta managers state they hoped the merger went through because it would give Airtran a outlet for the aircraft they had coming other then Atlanta and would stop yield depression in ATL. Even after the deal NWA has no operational control of Midwest. Its likely that had no one attempted a takeover of Midwest the situation would be the same today and management there would be doing the same things.