Aldermen spent their meter votes on a sealed promise to sell a deportation airline

Aldermen traded their votes for a promise to sell a deportation airline. The vote is spent. The airline is not sold. The promise is sealed. And the buyer has no name.

Chicago · 30 September 2026

On Monday, 28 September, a company called ATSG announced it had agreed to sell Omni Air International. Omni is the charter airline that has been flying long-haul deportation flights for the Department of Homeland Security. ATSG is owned by Stonepeak, the same New York firm that wanted Chicago’s parking meters. Stonepeak bought ATSG for about $3.1 billion in April 2025, and Omni came along in the box.

On Tuesday, 29 September, the City Council approved the meter sale 46 to 3.

The airline sale has not closed. ATSG says the fourth quarter of 2026 or early 2027, once regulators sign off.

The vote came first. The airline comes later, if it comes.

How the airline got into a parking story

The 2008 meter contract lets the council turn down a new owner for only a few reasons. One of them is the reputation of the buyer’s other companies. Aldermen argued a deportation airline owned by the buyer counts. More than a dozen aldermen from the Latino and Progressive caucuses said they would not vote yes while Stonepeak owned it. Ald. Nicole Lee of the 11th Ward put it plainly. The airline, she said, was “the opening that we used in order to get this deal done.”

That was their leverage. They used it, and it worked. Stonepeak promised to sell.

The sealed promise

Stonepeak put that promise in writing, in what the city calls a divestiture certification. Aldermen were allowed to read it. The public was not. The city’s top lawyer, Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry, said it could not be shared.

We do not know what the promise says. We do not know if it has a deadline. We do not know what happens if the sale falls apart. And we know the airline is not in the ordinance the council passed. We read it. It is not there.

Aldermen could read it. You cannot.

The buyer with no name

ATSG’s announcement says Omni is going to OAI Holdings, LLC. It describes OAI as “a private company whose management team brings deep expertise in aviation.” That is the whole description. No owners named. No price disclosed.

A private company whose owners nobody will name, buying an airline for a price nobody will say. If you wanted to know whether the flights stop, you would start by asking who owns the plane. Right now nobody can answer that in public.

What the seller said

ATSG’s own chief executive, Greg Mays, did not describe the sale as a concession to Chicago. He described it as “an important step for ATSG,” one that “reflects the advancement of our long-term strategy” of focusing on air cargo.

The thing Chicago’s aldermen fought for, and traded their votes for, is a thing the seller says it had been weighing for some time.

The aldermen were customers. They were sold something the other side was already happy to give away, and they paid full price for it in the one currency a council has, its vote.

What to watch

Three things, and all three are on paper somewhere.

1. Who owns OAI Holdings.
2. What the sealed certification says, and whether it has a deadline.
3. Whether the $75 million lands at closing before the airline sale does.

If the planes keep flying the same routes under a new name on the side, the promise was kept and nothing changed. We will be watching the tail numbers.

Sources

The RulesThe RecordArchive