It has finally happened -- Chicago Mayor Richard Daley finally found a consortium to privatize Midway International Airport under a $2.5 billion, 99-year lease. You can read my story (subscribers only) in today's Aviation Daily.

The city first announced that it wanted to privatize Midway back in September 2006. It's part of an FAA pilot that allows five airports in the U.S. to be leased to private operators, with one slot reserved for a large hub airport, taken by Midway. The city originally announced plans to take the large-hub airport slot for Midway. The city got conditional approval from FAA in October 2006, and announced plans to complete the privatization by the end of 2007. 

The jockeying for partners to bid on the privatization read like a who's who of airport companies, including Macquarie, Fraport, Aeroports de Paris and Vancouver Airport Services, among others.  The initial price tag was $3 billion.

But the city's plans hit a snag after Midway's largest airline tenant -- Southwest -- along with other carriers expressed concern about how their operations would be affected under a privatized airport. But the city resolved the issue, with four of the five largest airlines operating at Midway – Southwest, AirTran, Delta and Northwest, which represent more than 95% of the traffic – inking new airport use agreements. Frontier said it will support the deal, and will sign its own new agreement after it receives the necessary approvals. 

The deal, announced yesterday during a press conference with Mayor Daley, gives MIDCo a 99-year lease on Midway. Partners in the winning consortium include New York’s Citi Infrastructure Investors, Vancouver-based YVR Airport Services Ltd. and Boston-based John Hancock Life Insurance Co.