{"id":2707,"date":"2006-12-13T22:59:43","date_gmt":"2006-12-13T22:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=2707"},"modified":"2006-12-13T22:59:43","modified_gmt":"2006-12-13T22:59:43","slug":"nothing_good_wi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=2707","title":{"rendered":"Nothing Good Will Come of a Midwest \/ Airtran Merger&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/12\/14\/business\/14air.html?ex=1166677200&amp;en=0d0b50feb7982344&amp;ei=5070&amp;emc=eta1\">Jeff Bailey<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>AirTran Holdings is roughly a tenth the size of its main competitor, Delta Air Lines. So AirTran executives would seem unlikely cheerleaders of a potential merger that would make Delta 60 percent larger.<\/p>\n<p>But the recent $8.5 billion takeover offer for Delta by US Airways has found a fan in Joseph B. Leonard, chief executive at AirTran, which, like Delta, flies routes across the Southeast from its hub in Atlanta.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m rooting for it,&rdquo; Mr. Leonard said yesterday in an interview, after announcing his own proposed takeover of Midwest Air, an airline based in Oak Creek, Ill., for $290 million.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Leonard may relish his role as underdog but that is not why he hopes the carriers merge &mdash; he just wants to see fewer jets in the sky. After all, US Airways&rsquo; proposed takeover would reduce the two airlines&rsquo; combined jet fleet about 10 percent.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeff Bailey: AirTran Holdings is roughly a tenth the size of its main competitor, Delta Air Lines. So AirTran executives would seem unlikely cheerleaders of a potential merger that would make Delta 60 percent larger. But the recent $8.5 billion takeover offer for Delta by US Airways has found a fan in Joseph B. Leonard, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2707"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}