Should American Securities remove the ELT and work to fix the company?  

You are correct.  When publicly traded, the stock price was about $55 the year before the sale.  The year of the sale, the stock dropped to $28 (the shorts had it going to $25).  Private equity paid about $43/share (a 50% premium over the $28 share price).  You would pay a premium for stock where the trajectory was upward- you would have to in order to attract shares.  But when the numbers are going the other (bad) way.....

That's not the worst part.  "Private equity" borrowed the money to "purchase" the company (the word "equity" is a misnomer, since many private equity groups borrow money to "purchase" companies).  Most commercial debt has covenants attached to it that requires the borrower to maintain certain financial ratios.  With lower reimbursement due to the No Surprises Act and increasing interest rates, this can be a problem.  So, in my opinion, the buyer paid too much and is now faced with problems with debt and reimbursement.   Plus, there is inflation in wages.

Here are a couple of things Aaron Todd said:  He wanted to keep debt at no less than 2 times and no more than 4 times cash flow.  According to Moody's, debt is now almost 9 times cash flow (so much for the term "equity" in private equity).  Next, he said the industry could do with about half the helicopters we have without degredation of service:  "And if you ask me personally, do we need 900 air medical helicopters to serve this country, I'd say probably not, maybe 500, 600 could do well, but it’s an open market, these are – we don’t have certificate of need restrictions."  This statement was in 2015 when we had about 900 helicopters in the HEMS industry (yes, I said "HEMS").