ATA Bites It

Chicagoist has posted a few times on ATA's money woes, so it only seemed like a matter of time before they filed for bankruptcy.. which is what they did yesterday. ATA is blaming fare wars and soaring fuel prices for their predicament, and joins United Airlines and US Airways as the 3rd major US airline to operate in bankruptcy.

ATA has a plan to sell their 14 gates at Chicago's Midway, its 2 slots at NY's LaGuardia and 1 slot at Reagan Washington to FL-based AirTran Airways. By doing this they think they can re-emerge over the next year as a smaller carrier. But ATA could be acquired by someone else and that would kill the proposed $87.5 million deal with AirTran. Like American West Airlines, out of AZ. .. they said that on Tuesday they offered to buy ATA and get them out of bankruptcy court.

While all of this is getting sorted out, ATA will continue to operate as normal on all of its routes and will honor tickets purchased in advance. Chicagoist is again hoping (please! please! please!) that this means we will never in our lifetime have to listen to that crappy song in thier commercials ("I'm gonna go easy, go ATAaaa, I'm gonna go eeeasy, go ATA.").