Originally Posted by
rsteinmetz70112
In 2006 Airtran attempted to buy Midwest eventually Republic Holdings acquired the assets. If Airtran had acquired Midwest I believe that would have been the best result. But it didn't happen.
The failure of AirTran's hostile takeover of Midwest was a good thing considering the timing of it all. The deal fell through in early 2008, just as oil prices were spiking and all the domestic airlines were struggling as a result. AirTran ended up growing organically in MKE in 2009-2010 and got most of the benefits of an MKE hub (some east-west connecting traffic plus good O&D from all of Wisconsin plus northern Illinois) without the costs of an acquisition.