No More ATA At Capital

[Tristar]

Well . . . that's certainly the most interesting version I've ever heard of the whole deal. Unfortunately aside from a few of the names being correct, there is nothing even close to right in that narrative.

When ATA emerged from the first bankruptcy with DIP financing from Matlin Patterson, they created holding company, ATAH, to "own" the airline. ATAH was really nothing more than a shell company, it's only asset was ATA, and in every sense except on paper was ATA.

Later ATAH purchased World Air Holdings (which owned WOA and NAA), then changed its name from ATAH to GAL to "better reflect it's mission.

The top executives from ATA/ATAH (Karnik & Co.) then moved the headquarters of GAL from IND to ATL, and ultimately shut down ATA.

There is no doubt ATA was loosing money on sched service. There were many reasons behind this, including surrendering many of our best markets to WN when John Dennison was running the show (can you say collusion boys and girls? I'll never be able to prove it, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck). Then add to this the complete mismanagement of our widebody program (park L-1011's we knew, get older DC-10's we didn't; get rid of most of our good in house mechanics, replace them with contract mx, ect) and ATA was backed into a corner. The final straw was when FedEx cancelled the contract due to poor performance (see above). Also, Southwest talked and talked about expanding the codeshare, but it never seemed to materialize.

Between all of this, MP finally had had enough. The story is they were initially going to shut down all of GAL, but it was pointed out that NAA and WOA were making money, so ATA got the axe. The problem with it all is it never should have happened. The employees reached out to MP on more than one occasion begging to have the idiots running the show replaced with real leadership. Our efforts were ignored, and so the employees of ATA paid the price for MP's ignorance and indifference to the very real problems that were bringing down the company. Oh, they did can Subodh - so we've got that going for us . . .

Fortunately for WOA and NAA, they seem to have competent management and a viable business model, so hopefully they will fare bette than ATA did.

 

[redneck jihad]

I think the service monkey was kidding, just like halintexas.

 

[Tristar]

Oops. Well, I feel like an a$$. Fortunately, I'm used to it (I'm married). I have heard some rather creative versions though, so it _seemed_ believable. Nevermind . . .

 

[servicemonkey]

I think the service monkey was kidding, just like halintexas.

Indeed-forgot the smiley face.

 

[Golden Falcon]

What seniority could there possibly be??? Thought that would have evaporated when ATA closed the doors...

 

[mu2]

What happend to G Moss?

 

[727Niteflyer]

I dont think they were real happy with him. Pretty hard to explain without getting into specifics, but he was let go shortly after the 75 came online.

 

[alpine1989]

I see that EW was named "High Flyer" of the month at Cappy. Good for him. He's a good guy.

Have you guys that were complaining gotten over yourselves?

 

[dutch747]

Later ATAH purchased World Air Holdings (which owned WOA and NAA), then changed its name from ATAH to GAL to "better reflect it's mission.

Tristar, good post with lots of good info, but you are wrong in saying ATA Holdings bought WOA/NAA, it was Matlin P. who bought WOA/NAA, then formed GAL which under GAL was ATA, WOA, NAA. If what you said was true your scope would have gone much further in the courts than it did. Sorry for the thread hijack.

 

[Tristar]

Well, MP already owned ATAH, the purchase occurred, then then name changed to GAL according to the documents I read. I'm not sure how much beyond that is semantics, but it's all sort of irrelevant at this point.

There is a ton of info on the whole SCOPE debacle, some of which I'm privy too and some not - there was more to that than just the order of the transaction, who bought what, ect; but it's all moot point now anyhow.