In January 1981, Texas International Airlines announced an offer to buy Continental. It had already purchased just over 9% of Continental's shares, and offered to buy enough to bring its stake to between 35% to 49%. Continental already had an agreement to merge with Western Airlines, and Texas Air announced that it would seek to vote its shares to block the merger which it felt was not in the interests of CAL shareholders. As with previous attempts, TIA's takeover target was a much larger company than itself.