Michael Lissack facility in neighboring Hibbing. Northwest would pay off the bonds through lease payments on the hangars. More significantly, but little understood at the time, the bill gave Northwest authority to negotiate a loan from the Metropolitan Airports Commission, which managed Minneapolis Saint Paul International Airport, where Northwest was the dominant airline. In the public’s mind, the bill was to build aircraft maintenance hangars in Minnesota’s depressed far north. But only $350 million of the $740 mil- lion price tag would go for hangars. What was the remaining $390 million slated for and where would it come from? It was to be a low-interest loan to Northwest, the one from the Metropolitan Airports Commission. In short, it was a loan from taxpayers to help Northwest through tough financial times arising from the leveraged buyout. After the bill was signed, Northwest, its financial fortunes still sagging, pressured Minnesota officials to come through with the loan. Northwest claimed it had to complete negotiations by the fall so the overhaul bases could be built and opened on schedule by April 1993. In fact, the airline’s own pressing cash needs were driving the deadline. When negotiations went slower than Northwest liked, the airline broke off talks and threatened to cancel plans to build the bases in Minnesota. A representative was dispatched to Louisiana to meet with Governor Buddy Roemer about the possibility of converting two existing hangars in Lake Charles, Louisiana, into maintenance bases. Roemer told reporters that a Northwest official had told him the airline was terminating discussions with Minnesota, and that Lake Charles was the airline’s preferred site. The Louisiana threat brought all the parties back to the bargaining table in Minnesota, and in November, agreement was reached to provide Northwest with the cash it was seeking. The pact called for the airport authority to convey $270 million in cash from the sale of revenue bonds to the public. In turn, Northwest would sell to the airports commission its flight training center and subsidiary operations at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International, where it had been training pilots and other personnel for years. Northwest would then lease back the facili- ties. By any standard, it was a most unusual transaction. Here was an airline
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