Republic Airways Holdings beat out Southwest Airlines in bidding for bankrupt Frontier Airlines, even though Southwest had the higher bid. Here’s how that happened:
Southwest said its $170 million bid was deemed unacceptable because the carrier would not back down from a requirement that its pilots and Frontier’s work out their integration before the deal would close.
Frontier said Republic made several improvements to its original June bid and has already received federal antitrust approval for the deal. A bankruptcy judge had approved Republic’s earlier bid but left open the door for another bidder.
Great news for Republic which will now be operating another airline (as opposed to running regionals for the big guys). Not so good news for passengers who have found Southwest to be the one bright spot in the increasingly cloudy world of cattle cars air travel.
Frequent flyers of Midwest Airlines pine for the good old days before Republic bought the airline and brought its once industry-best levels of service down several notches to its own level. Of course, Frontier was never a high-service airline, so perhaps passengers won’t notice much difference. What’s certain is that they will not enjoy Southwest’s saner policies on things like checked baggage.
With news like this, it’s no wonder more and more storefront travel agents are becoming home-based travel agents!
