Republic Gets Court Approval to Buy Frontier, But It's Not a Done Deal

(MoneyWatch)  The bankruptcy court decided yesterday that Republic's offer to purchase Frontier's outstanding shares for $108.75 million was adequate, and they are permitted to proceed. That, however, doesn't mean this is a done deal.

The purchase agreement has a clause that says basically if Frontier can do better, they should go ahead and do it. So if anyone out there would like to own Frontier, you have until August 3 to get your initial proposals in and until August 10 for the final one. The final decision will be made on August 11.

The Republic plan continues to maintain that Frontier and Lynx will both continue to be operated independently. That gives Republic one airline operating 120+ seat jets (Frontier), one operating 70 seat turboprops (Lynx), two operating 70 to 100 seat jets (Republic, Shuttle America), and one operating 30 to 50 seat jets (Chautauqua). You can also throw Midwest on top of that, but they won't be operating any of their airplanes at all.

Where does this leave Republic? It's not exactly clear, but they certainly are building up quite the arsenal for world domination.