American Airlines to buy TWA

ST. LOUIS - American Airlines reportedly will announce plans this week to buy financially troubled Trans World Airlines Inc., a proposal that would mean the end of TWA, the oldest continuous line in American commercial aviation.

According to The Washington Post, TWA plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Wednesday, the third time it has done so, as a precursor of the takeover by AMR Corp.'s American Airlines. The takeover would be announced that day.

TWA was founded July 13, 1925, as Western Air Express, and merged five years later with Transcontinental Air Transport to form to Transcontinental and Western Air, or TWA. The company changed the name without changing the initials in 1950, when then-owner Howard Hughes made it Trans World Airlines.

The deal, the price of which was not disclosed, also reportedly involves AMR buying a 49 percent stake in DC Air, a new carrier that is being crafted from United Airlines parent UAL Corp.'s planned acquisition of the Arlington, Va.-based US Airways Group Inc.

To ease antitrust concerns, DC Air - which will be run by Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson - would have most of the takeoff and landing slots at Washington's Reagan National Airport now assigned to US Airways.

TWA is the nation's eighth-largest carrier, and US Airways is No. 6, while American is No. 2. United is the world's largest.