Hello everybody. The history of this deal was in the making long before the furloughs started. As someone on here stated, Midwest was not in desperate times. It had 170 million cash before the sale to TPG/Northwest. That is a lot of money for a company that size. When Delta became involved in the merger with Northwest, something started to change. Seabury was brought on property, not to lower cost, but gut the place for something to happen. Maybe RAH. The pay rates offered were 87 max for CA & 37 for FO, hmmmm. Same as RAH fo's, which of course they knew nobody would sign. The rumor was that the B717's were being taken by Boeing, however at a later date, one of the furloughed Midwest pilots landed a job transporting airplanes for Boeing and just so happens he is transporting a B717 to Mexico with a Boeing Rep. on board. Funny how things eventually come out, but the B717 was given back of free will, in fact Boeing wanted to even lower the lease rates, but Midwest/TPG/Seabury said NO. Boeing at the time had nowhere to put these things. The RAH deal was already made. They never had any intentions of training YX pilots on the 170, just stalling for the perfect time. Many other little nasty details left out, but Midwest was not a dead company, Many very smart people at TPG outbid Airtran and paid almost 1/2 Billion for this company, and are still involved now.