Midwest Air: It's Not Such a Wonderful Life

America loves nothing more than an underdog, and that's exactly what Midwest(MEH Quote) is.

The Milwaukee-based airline is a Jimmy Stewart kind of company, run by nice Midwestern people, ingrained in its community, battling the big guys on principal, and known for the chocolate chip cookies it bakes on its planes.

But baking cookies is antithetical to an industry where Delta, in the mid-1990s, cut the lettuce leaf liner from its salad plates and saved $1.4 million a year, and where American CEO Bob Crandall liked to brag that he saved $40,000 a year by eliminating olives from salads. ...