Well, Republic’s been busy this week.
Yesterday, the carrier announced that it would be purchasing Frontier to bring the carrier out of bankruptcy protection. The Frontier brand will continue. PlaneBuzz brings up an interesting point – at this point in time, Republic does regional flying for United. Assuming the deal goes through, Republic-owned Frontier will now be competing with United, specifically in the Denver market, where both carriers have hubs.
Today, Republic announced its intent to purchase Midwest from TPG Group, which, in all honesty isn’t too shocking considering that Republic has loaned money to Midwest, it currently flies E170s for them, and recently it was announced that a Republic-owned company would be replacing the flying done by SkyWest. Another not-surprising part of the announcement was that Midwest’s remaining 717s will be going away and be replaced by E190s.
questions:
how come Republic has money?
when does Republic’s agreements with United end? would they try and make a go of it as an independent carrier
will they try and integrate the two airlines? Midwest and Frontier?
where does air tran fit into this? They tried to buy midwest but thwarted by
Frontier/Midwest/air tran would be very intriguing.