Originally Posted by
knope2001
As tiresome as it can be dredging up the old Midwest versus AirTran takeover debate again and again, at least the Midwest vs AirTran competitive fight is an ongoing active one. Hoekesma lost control of the company when TPG took over, a deal accpeted 32 long months ago today. He was pretty much just a figurehead in the TPG days and been out of the picture since Republic came.
Refreshing the memory of everyone is entirely germain. As I've noted before it is not uncommon in the business of merger and takeover to search for a benign partner, a "white knight" as it were. How gravely mistaken was the ex-CEO in his choice.
IMO the approval granted for NW to purchase Midwest should never have been given. In today's regulatory environment I don't think it would have passed muster. The demise of Skyway affected many small communities negatively.
The fact is is that Midwest was not viable as a stand-alone. This is borne out empirically;with today's announcement the last vestige of Midwest will soon be gone.
Air Tran was near spot-on off its analysis of Midwest 4 years ago; and this analysis has been vindicated in entirety. Milwaukee is a vibrant and growing market, and Air Tran has grown its MKE hub organically.
Bedford identified clearly his vision for the product as a low-fare carrier; and the Midwest brand was out-of-sync with this vision.
I'll be retiring from the Midwest board at this point

-last post. Good luck to you all whether your plans are to stick with Frontier, or to opt for the transfer in MSP, DTW, or ATL, or ORD