About that other airline

As postmortems fly on ATAâ??s second, and final, nosedive
into bankruptcy, another Indianapolis airline is doing a lot better and getting hardly any attention.

Republic Airways Holdings Inc. isnâ??t a household name because it quietly flies regional routes on behalf of big carriers.
Those regional airlines are called Chautauqua Airlines, Republic Airlines and Shuttle America.

The news out of Republic couldnâ??t sound more different than ATAâ??s. Republic releases include words like â??increase,â??
â??higherâ??
and â??improved.â??

Its stock price has been flat near $20 a share for the past year, but the plateau came after climbing from an initial public
offering price of $13 in 2004, and at a time lots of other airline stocks arenâ??t performing well.

Early last year it announced plans to add 1,000 pilots by the end of 2008. That would bring the headcount on pilots alone
to 2,600. As is the case with other airlines, nowhere near all of them will live in the companyâ??s headquarters city.

Still, itâ??s growth.

What do you think?