Eastern Montana loses rural air service but Big Sky Airlines employees try to keep flying
| February 17, 2008 |  View for printing |
Stepping down the airplane's stairs to the two-room Glasgow terminal on a windy, subzero Friday night, emergency room physician Dr. Michael Bush wondered if this might be his last flight to work a weekend shift at the 25-bed critical-access hospital.
Since 1993, Bush, the medical director for St. Vincent Healthcare emergency services in Billings, has been flying Big Sky Airlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Sky_Airlines to northeastern Montana several times a year to help fill a doctor shortage in the sparsely populated region.
Now Big Sky Airlines, the only regularly scheduled airline to serve seven remote Eastern Montana cities, including Glasgow, is going out of business.
By JAN FALSTAD Of The Gazette Staff
Full Story: http://www.billingsgazette.net/artic ... 0-eas_g.txt
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Big Sky Airlines employees try to keep flying
By JAN FALSTAD Of The Gazette Staff
Not content to see Montana's only airline dissolved, Big Sky Airlines employees have formed Phoenix Acquisition LLC to make an offer to buy the company and run it themselves.
The effort may be the only way regularly scheduled airline service to the state's far-flung eastern cities will continue without interruption.
Big Sky pilots and their union, Local 15 of the United Transportation Union, are leading the charge to keep the Billings-based airline flying.
Full Story: http://www.billingsgazette.net/artic ... -bigsky.txt
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Big Sky may be pawn within airline's parent company
By JAN FALSTAD Of The Gazette Staff
The decision to kill Big Sky Airlines may not be based entirely on the airline's profits or losses.
The little company may be a pawn in a larger game by investors to claim the profits of Big Sky's parent company, Minneapolis-based MAIR Holdings Inc.
Some of the giant hedge funds buying stock in MAIR have no interest in running Big Sky, but want to sell off the airline and distribute MAIR's holdings, which could approach $150 million.
Full Story: http://www.billingsgazette.net/artic ... airline.txt
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