Ah!
All change again according to today's New York Times:
May 2, 2008
Aloha cargo service gets green light to fly again
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:07 a.m. ET
HONOLULU (AP) -- Aloha Airlines was cleared to resume cargo operations Thursday night under an agreement approved by a bankruptcy court judge.
The operations, which handled 85 percent of Hawaii's interisland air cargo before shutting down Monday, will be overseen by a court-appointed trustee until May 14. That is when the sale of Aloha's cargo division to Seattle-based Saltchuk Resources Inc. is to be completed.
Saltchuk, parent company of Hawaii's biggest interisland ocean shipper, announced earlier in the day that it had worked out a deal to buy Aloha's cargo operation by obtaining the consent of Aloha's main lender, GMAC Commercial Finance. The purchase price wasn't announced.
The agreement called for operations to resume by midnight Thursday, with Aloha's cargo employees to be hired to return to run the operation.
Last week, Saltchuk pulled out of an auction for the cargo service after its $13 million offer was outbid by another company. The auction ended with no winner.
Saltchuk President Tim Engle said his company's interest was revived by the efforts of Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and his staff.
''We re-engaged in our efforts to acquire Aloha's air cargo operation after Sen. Inouye personally called us shortly after the shutdown of operations earlier this week,'' Engle said in a news release.
Inouye said that when he learned of the shutdown, he couldn't just sit by.
''There were just too many people and businesses being hurt,'' he said in a news release. ''I had to reach out and offer my help to get a primary air cargo operation back in business.''
There was no mention in the announcement of which pilots would be used to fly the planes. Before the cargo operation was shut down, the Air Line Pilots Association had voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike of Aloha cargo operations in a dispute over which pilots would fly the planes.
The union wants the airline to use seniority to determine which pilots to use for the cargo flights, and to include those who had been piloting passenger flights.
Saltchuk's announcement said the rehired Aloha cargo employees would work for the newly formed Saltchuk subsidiary Aeko Kula Inc.
In 2000, Saltchuk acquired Young Brothers/Hawaiian Tug & Barge, the state's largest interisland cargo service. In 2006, the company purchased Hawaii Fuel Network, Maui Petroleum and Minit Stop Stores. Saltchuk also owns Northern Air Cargo, the largest cargo carrier in Alaska, which uses the same type of aircraft as Aloha.
Aloha filed for bankruptcy and then closed down its passenger service in March. It has sold its contract services division to Pacific Air Cargo for $2 million, a move U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Lloyd King formally approved on Thursday.