Suitors pursue
Aloha Airlines

Investors who sought stakes
in Hawaiian Airlines are
after its local competitor

Several investors who unsuccessfully pursued Hawaiian Airlines during its ongoing bankruptcy reorganization are now turning their attention to rival carrier Aloha Airlines.

In what amounts to a rare second chance to buy a significant stake in the state's airline industry, mainland suitors are exploring investments in Aloha in the wake of the carrier's Chapter 11 filing on Dec. 30.

Among some of the potential investors are:

The airline, which is running short of cash, is hoping to cut operating expenses by $60 million, or up to 15 percent, this year through labor contract concessions, renegotiating aircraft leases and changing its route operations. Aloha could announce a change in its route structure as early as today.

Stephen Compagni Portis, a partner with Vx, said his company has been "actively reviewing the situation."

"We have a high level of interest in proposing a plan of reorganization to allow the company to emerge from bankruptcy," said Portis, who was one of the finalists for Hawaiian until dropping out of the process. "We believe that there's a place in the market for Aloha. We think that the state's residents want to have two interisland carriers and we think the prospects for successful reorganization of Aloha are encouraging."

Indigo was founded by managing partner William Franke, the former chairman and CEO of America West. The fund has investments in Tiger Airlines in Singapore and Wizz Airlines in Budapest, Hungary.

Franke said he doesn't comment on deals in the marketplace, but people familiar with the situation said he is interested in Aloha.

"We're in the airline investment business. We look at airlines worldwide on a regular basis," Franke said.

Jonathan Ornstein, the chairman and CEO of Mesa Air Group, said the company has been approached by Aloha Airlines.

"We're taking a look at it," Ornstein said. "We look at everything. People in the industry know that we like bankruptcies and we have been participants in these kinds of deals. We have had interest in Hawaii from the days of (now-defunct) Discovery Airways."

Some of the other investors who previously pursued Hawaiian Airlines declined to comment or didn't return phone calls.

Portis said investors have to weigh different factors when looking at Aloha's situation as opposed to Hawaiian's circumstances.

"The value of Aloha Airlines is clearly less than Hawaiian Airlines due to Hawaiian's fleet, name recognition and perception of high-quality service," Portis said. "Hawaiian is better positioned due to the cities it serves, its wide-body aircraft and the recognition of the Hawaiian name."

Aloha's financial situation also is less visible than Hawaiian because the airline is privately held. It's that lack of publicly available information that has convinced turnaround firm Corporate Recovery Group of Wilson, Wyo., to stay out of the running. Corporate Recovery Group teamed up with Boeing Capital Corp. nearly a year ago to file the first reorganization plan in the Hawaiian Airlines bankruptcy.

Corporate Recovery Group subsequently dropped out of the running when Boeing Capital decided to team up with Hawaiian Airlines trustee Joshua Gotbaum, the Hawaiian unsecured creditors' committee and investment group RC Aviation LLC.

"We've looked at Aloha and we're not going to do anything at this point," said Ron Orr, a principal of Corporate Recovery Group. "It's harder to figure out what's going on as far as an analysis. We had a lot of historical knowledge of Hawaiian, which we don't have about Aloha."

In another development, a new contract that Aloha's pilots union expected to sign with the company has hit a last-minute snag and is expected to be delayed by several days.

"In principle, the agreement has basically been reached," said Steve Brenessel, spokesman for Aloha's unit of the Air Line Pilots Association. "But they say in that cliche that the devil is in the details, and it is. The accountants and number crunchers on both sides have uncovered some details that they want to be sure of so that they're talking apples and oranges and the numbers actually work out right."