A group of investors and entrepreneurs has acquired the rights to the trademarks of the old Eastern Air Lines and hopes to start a new airline using the old name.
An application for airline rights filed Tuesday at the Transportation Department said the company hopes to begin service by operating charters with one leased A320 aircraft.
The key figure in the enterprise is Edward Wegel, CEO and the founder of Aviation Capital Partners Group, an entity that has acquired the intellectual property of the estate of the old Eastern, including its logo and various trademarks. The old Eastern went into liquidation after it ceased operations in January 1991.
According to his resume, between 2004 and 2008 Wegel was the CEO and “chief restructuring officer” of One Travel Holdings, a Texas travel company that went into bankruptcy after the demise of one of its subsidiaries, FS SunTours (formerly SunTrips).
The resume filed with the DOT also states that in the early 1990s Wegel was a founding board member and senior vice president of finance for Atlantic Coast Airlines, a regional carrier that operated as United Express at the Washington Dulles hub and later tried, and failed, to operate on its own as Independence Air.
He also worked with the old Eastern in the mid-1980s. Between 1995 and 1997 he served as COO of the airline of Trinidad and Tobago, then known as BWIA and now flying as Caribbean Airlines.
The financing plan for the new Eastern envisions a private placement of stock valued at between $9 million and $14 million, with Wegel and his Aviation Capital Partners Group holding some 22.5% of the equity.
Holding nearly 30% would be 1848 Capital Partners, a Miami private equity group headed by Joseph DaGrosa, the vice chairman of Jet Support Services Inc., a provider of maintenance programs for business jet aircraft and engines.
Also part of the start-up team as the CFO is former Alamo vice president James Tolzien, who was with Around the World Travel (TraveLeaders) in Coral Gables, Fla., as CFO and later president between 2000 and 2007.
The resume submitted to the DOT also notes his affiliation between 1997 and 1999 with Dancing Bear Investments, described as a “private investment vehicle with over $100 million invested in early-stage businesses focused on Internet–based marketing/sales delivery systems in travel, automobile sales, and personal communications.”
Travel Weekly’s archives indicate that Tolzien also served during this period as president of IntelleTravel, a network of home-based agents backed by former Alamo chairman Mike Egan, who was the owner of Dancing Bear.