It’s still a long-shot, but United requested a bid from Independence Air to operate as a United Express carrier. This is precisely the move being pushed for by Independence Air’s largest shareholder. The Washington Dulles-based low fare carrier has been losing buckets of money and warnings have been issued about a possible bankruptcy filing in January, a mere seven months after starting service as an independent carrier. FlyI used to operate as Atlantic Coast Airlines with most of their flying as the United Express carrier at Dulles and additional activity as a regional carrier for United at Chicago and for Delta at Boston (if I recall correctly, in this last case). The problems they face are several-fold. They decided to sell tickets directly to consumers, bypassing Global Distribution Systems. The model works well for an…
