Originally Posted by
MD80
Deltas plan is working... put Midwest/AirTran out of business and takeover Milwaukee for $450,000. I hope they don't have a bigger plan in the works (eg. building a low-cost 100 seat airline) because this one is working very smooth.
Give or take $213 million, but who's counting?
But, as is common when airline managers concentrate their efforts on something other than running an airline, AirTran is thanking their lucky stars NWA management stepped in and saved them.
AirTran's cash would have went below zero in summer 08 if they had bought MidWest. NWA literally saved them.
Good money, bad money. Midwest Airlines, which used to be Midwest Express and is sometimes dubbed the bottomless money pit of Milwaukee, has
saved itself from bankruptcy with yet
another investment by TPG, the Texas Pacific
Group. It's about $30 million. What's different this time is that it's lured another airline, Republic Airways, into
putting money into its future, even though the last airline it won over, Northwest Airlines, had to
write off all of its $213-million investment in Midwest (for a 47% stake). Republic puts in $15 million in a one-year loan, and agrees to another $10 million if Midwest meets some performance criteria. But Republic also gets a home for the dozen 76-seat Embraers it has been trying to place since it had to take them back from Frontier (which hasn't avoided bankruptcy) in late June.