Originally Posted by Wilbur

One upon a time (80s-90s) United planned to move a lot of their facilities and processes from ORD to IND. UA built a significant amount of infrastructure for aircraft services and maintenance at IND with this in mind.

However, Indiana at the time didn't observe daylight savings time until 2006, and so prior to that it wobbled back and forth between Eastern and Central time, making airline scheduling problematic. The governor of Indiana at the time refused to make the necessary changes so that the state was in the correct time zone and would observe or fail to observe daylight savings time. UA needed IND to be in a set time zone, and the governor would not support the change. Other internal financial pressures at UA also came to bear on the plan as well, but the time zone issue and Indiana government unwillingness to continue to work with UA by providing additional subsidies was a big driver.

Therefore UA abandoned their push to shift to IND, and the hangars and supporting buildings were available to FedEx, who eventually occupied them for pennies on the dollar.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/10/b...s-pay-off.html

https://www.ibj.com/articles/23784-a...e-now-bustling