Pritzker Revives His Offer to Buy Eastern Airlines

Billionaire hotelier Jay Pritzker resurfaced Friday with an offer to buy strike-crippled Eastern Airlines, sources said, increasing the chance of a sale following the collapse of a deal with former Baseball Commissioner Peter V. Ueberroth’s investor group.

Ueberroth was said to still be interested in reviving his own bid for the airline, and financier Carl C. Icahn was meeting with union representatives this weekend to talk about a deal, the sources and union officials said.

“Right now is a good time for the pot to boil,” said one of the sources. None of the sources wanted to be identified.

Did Not Return Phone Calls

They said the Pritzker proposal essentially mirrored a bid he made before the Ueberroth deal was announced April 6. The value of the Pritzker offer was not clear. Based on his earlier offer, it would be worth about $500 million.

Pritzker’s representatives presented what they described as an exploratory proposal Friday to a meeting of the 15-member Eastern creditors committee in Manhattan, the sources said.

It called for Pritzker to buy Eastern’s fleet of about 250 planes for an unspecified cash payment and lease them back to the airline, the sources said.

In addition, Pritkzer would pay Eastern about $100 million cash, receive all the airline’s stock except for an unspecified share to be owned by its unions, and would forgive $185 million in debt owed by Eastern to its parent Texas Air Corp., the sources said.

Pritzker did not return telephone calls to his Chicago office, and Texas Air officials declined to comment on the latest chapter of a tortuous effort to peddle the nation’s seventh-largest airline, which has been mired in a bitter strike and bankruptcy court mess for more than a month.

Texas Air officials said after the Ueberroth deal failed that they intended to restructure Eastern as a smaller airline with about half its pre-strike work force and flight schedule.

But potential suitors may have been prodded to keep their feet in the door by a federal judge’s order Wednesday, issued shortly after Ueberroth formally withdrew his offer.

Ueberroth’s deal fell through because of an intractable dispute between the unions and Texas Air Chairman Frank Lorenzo over whether a court-appointed trustee should run Miami-based Eastern until Ueberroth’s group could assume control.

With his order, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland moved to lure other buyers--raising the possibility of an auction supervised by his court.

Lifland, overseeing Eastern’s Chapter 11 reorganization, ordered the parties in the case to explain Monday why he should not invite other bids for Eastern that would include major assets it owned before Lorenzo bought the airline in 1986.

Other Possible Buyers

Charles E. Bryan, the leader of Eastern’s Machinists, said Friday that he remained confident that the airline will fly under a new owner, and he noted that Ueberroth should not be ruled out as a candidate.

“It will be resolved. That’s my prediction,” Bryan said in an interview. “There are several other credible buyers.”

In addition to Ueberroth, Bryan would identify only Icahn. Bryan said he was late for a speech Friday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., because he was returning a phone call from Ueberroth.

Bryan declined to discuss the conversation, but said he considers the former Olympics organizer still “a player.”

Ueberroth said Thursday he had not been in touch with any of the parties involved.