MESA Loses 24 Million!!!!!

[Flyer1015]

Your retarded!!

It's reasons like these that I love flightinfo forums! Where else would I get my daily dose of irony and humor?

 

[Superpilot92]

Actually, the agreement is an 'At Risk' agreement with Delta. Not good! Look a little harder before you type.

Oh, and pass the koolaid. We ain't doin' so good here at Express.

That's how it used to be in the past why is it so bad now? If its not looking so good why would you pass up a job at CAL? Must not look that bad. Your optimism is inspirational!! Obviously you are a business genius and you should be our CEO, WE NEED YOUR HELP!!!

 

[Superpilot92]

It's reasons like these that I love flightinfo forums! Where else would I get my daily dose of irony and humor?

You're Right!!!

 

[samballs]

I guess spelling and grammar may get you "noticed", or perhaps "paid" (or is it payed?) more. Remember, in this industry we're not happy until "you're" (or is it your?) not happy!
And what's with all these new guys being lost without an electronic calculator these days to complete an easy W&B load manifest?

Does nobody teach simple Math and English anymore?

you must be a fag

 

[Tarzan]

Your retarded!! NONE of us know what our bid was for DAL. That isnt public knowledge And you sir pretending you know just makes you look ignorant. Lets see some facts on that mister CEO. :crying:

Wow! What a well thought out and reasonable response.

I was glad to see the XJT get the flying out of LAXinstead of Mesa. We looked at as it raising the DCI average pay rates. However, I've been told on the side that XJT bid the flying at cost by an individual who would probably know. It let the wind out of my sails to hear that. I hoped it wasn't true but it stands to reason it was.

Get over yourself and understand that when you start tossing barbs to insult others, it doesn't exactly call out intelligence on your part either.

 

[Pocono Pilot]

That's how it used to be in the past why is it so bad now? If its not looking so good why would you pass up a job at CAL? Must not look that bad. Your optimism is inspirational!! Obviously you are a business genius and you should be our CEO, WE NEED YOUR HELP!!!

Maybe I should have taken the CAL job, especially seeing how fast ExpressJet is falling.

But ExpressJet has pretty far to fall before I would lower myself to working for CAL. From what I hear it is the pits there. Worse contract than ours.

Having said all that, I am not blind to how bad things are about to get at ExpressJet if something isn't done - and done fast!

Stop drinking the koolaid. This has Independence Air written all over it.

 

[Superpilot92]

Wow! What a well thought out and reasonable response.

I was glad to see the XJT get the flying out of LAXinstead of Mesa. We looked at as it raising the DCI average pay rates. However, I've been told on the side that XJT bid the flying at cost by an individual who would probably know. It let the wind out of my sails to hear that. I hoped it wasn't true but it stands to reason it was.

Get over yourself and understand that when you start tossing barbs to insult others, it doesn't exactly call out intelligence on your part either.

Bottom Line is Neither you nor I know what My company bid for the DAL flying. So by you coming on here and saying that we are doing it at cost shows what about your Intelligence?? Wind, Sails??? You heard from someone in the "KNOW" then it must be true. Seriously we could have kept those planes and flown them for ourselves why would we give up some of our better planes to DAL just to fly for nothing. By all means if you have some factual Information Please share! In the mean time I am really glad we could come in and raise the DCI avg. :beer:

 

[Superpilot92]

Maybe I should have taken the CAL job, especially seeing how fast ExpressJet is falling.

But ExpressJet has pretty far to fall before I would lower myself to working for CAL. From what I hear it is the pits there. Worse contract than ours.

Having said all that, I am not blind to how bad things are about to get at ExpressJet if something isn't done - and done fast!

Stop drinking the koolaid. This has Independence Air written all over it.

You sound like you are just trying to scare people senior to you into leaving!!Good Play my friend!! Koolaid is such a retarded term and so is comparing XJT to FLYI. Look i am far from a XJT lifer, sure while i am here in am going to enjoy it and Do enjoy it but I am here to get my time built up so i can move on just like you should have done with CAL.

 

[Jack Mehoff]

does anyone know how much of this loss stems from GO!? Seems like the ship is really sinking over there

 

[Poahi]

does anyone know how much of this loss stems from GO!? Seems like the ship is really sinking over there

About $600,000. The biggest part of the loss is from an $30 Million "Incentive Payment" made to UAL. JO was evasive as to what that was for, but it looks to me it was for either keeping or extending the UAX agreement.

The rest of it had mostly to do with higher than forecast maintenance expenses.

United and ATC were blamed for the losses.

BTW, Mesa isn't going to have a contract for at least another 2 years.

 

[topdawg]

$600,000 my ass.... "go!'s operating results were $700,000 below plan" (mesa press release). Below plan being the key words there. Maybe they came out here willing to lose $10 million to get Aloha out because it seemed easy and would turn into a good investment. That would make it $10.7 million so far. The true number Im sure will never be exposed. JO's already blaming it on ******************** like bad weather and Im sure the numbers will be absorbed into his other excuses.

Oh and fcuk GO!

 

[Poahi]

$600,000 my ass.... "go!'s operating results were $700,000 below plan" (mesa press release). Below plan being the key words there. Maybe they came out here willing to lose $10 million to get Aloha out because it seemed easy and would turn into a good investment. That would make it $10.7 million so far. The true number Im sure will never be exposed. JO's already blaming it on ******************** like bad weather and Im sure the numbers will be absorbed into his other excuses.

Oh and fcuk GO!

Easy there general - you're going to burst a blood vessel. $700,000 is right. I don't know what the plan was, but unfortunately, none of the carriers is reporting inter-island financial info. This fall, that will change.

The thread was about the $24 Million loss and go! is really a small part of it. Aloha isn't going anywhere.

 

[CFIse]

To try and give a balanced perspective it should be noted that Mesa had a pro forma profit. It didn't meet analysts expectations by quite a margin, but it was still a profit.

What dropped it to the loss was 2 major issues:

- Mesa "paid to play" for the United contract. That payment was being amortized over the life of the contract, Mesa has decided that the contract is no longer profitable and wrote the entire amount off in one quarter.

- Mesa made signficant capital improvements to get the Delta Dash fleet flying, they were amortizing that investment, but that contract isn't going to be profitable and it's being cut short - so they wrote that amount off in one quarter.

This was a "take out the trash" quarter - once they realised that they were going to miss analysts expectations (mostly, as I understand it, because they missed collecting on some (all?) United incentive payments, they got a power by the hour increase from GE they didn't expect, or at least didn't plan for, and they were getting raped on APU overhauls) they decided to throw everything out in one quarter.

By getting rid of the amortizing payments they make future quarters look a lot better. Also note that they got United to take some fuel costs directly, as opposed to passing them through the books as revenue. Since it was always a pass through there was no profit associated with it, so now any profit will be a larger percentage of a reduced revenue number - which the market will approve of going forward.

So Mesa will whine to United to get some kind of relief on the contract, they've already negotiated a deal with Delta MX to handle the engine work so they'll lose the GE power by the hour issue in a few quarters and who knows what will happen with the APUs, but expect a hot summer at Mesa.

It is STUNNINGLY difficult to lose money on fee for departure - although I have no doubt Mesa could handle it if they wanted. The "at risk" flying is the EAS and go!, and as a percentage of the companies revenue those are small potatoes (really, go! would be hard pushed to have a material effect on mesa financials, despite conspiracy theorists ideas).

If it was a play to get the pilots to knuckle under it was REALLY BADLY planned since:

- section 6 dosn't open until late summer, and the company has steadfastly refused to negotiate any earlier, and why would they?

- even with section 6 open push won't come to shove on the negotiations for at least 12 months - we need to bat a few totally unacceptable offers from both sides across the table a few times before anybody gets serious.

- Mesa didn't blame the pilots - which you'd figure they would if they were going to try some leverage.

I'd be willing to bet Mesa won't be able to stop itself being profitable going forward, albeit perhaps at reduced numbers, but after dumping the trash like that expectations are going to be lowered anyway. If Mesa wants to use lack of profit as leverage to screw the pilots - and they might, this wasn't the quarter they played that card, it's yet to come.

 

[hyperboy]

CFISE You are dumb

I see you on this board as well as the mesa forum...You always have an excuse and it is never that bad to you. What a jerk! I am a mesa pilot as well and you have not a clue. It is bad over here. How many days you getting off? Do you not have a life? You obviuosly don't have loved ones or if you do they don'y love you cause they have no idea who you are. You always make excuses...They took a loss and don't be an idiot about it. You need to get off "JO's kool aid hose"...have a lil more respect for yourself!

Don't make us sound like you are the majority, you are on your own pal!

 

[mdanno808]

What dropped it to the loss was 2 major issues:

- Mesa "paid to play" for the United contract. That payment was being amortized over the life of the contract, Mesa has decided that the contract is no longer profitable and wrote the entire amount off in one quarter.

- Mesa made signficant capital improvements to get the Delta Dash fleet flying, they were amortizing that investment, but that contract isn't going to be profitable and it's being cut short - so they wrote that amount off in one quarter.

This was a "take out the trash" quarter - once they realised that they were going to miss analysts expectations (mostly, as I understand it, because they missed collecting on some (all?) United incentive payments, they got a power by the hour increase from GE they didn't expect, or at least didn't plan for, and they were getting raped on APU overhauls) they decided to throw everything out in one quarter.

It is STUNNINGLY difficult to lose money on fee for departure - although I have no doubt Mesa could handle it if they wanted. The "at risk" flying is the EAS and go!, and as a percentage of the companies revenue those are small potatoes (really, go! would be hard pushed to have a material effect on mesa financials, despite conspiracy theorists ideas).

.

OK.
First you state that the United contract and Delta dash contract were unprofitable (possibly because managements bids were unrealistic?), yet you later write that "It is STUNNINGLY difficult to lose money on fee for departure". It looks to me like Mesa managed to do it.

You also claim that Mesa is being raped on APU overhauls. What are they paying vs. the average rate that a non-Mesa airline pays? If it is significantly higher, then why are they paying it? How many APU's have they had to overhaul?

As for the Go! interisland venture.... I won't go there, other than to say that losses are losses, and no BOD or shareholder likes to see them. Go! to me simply shows how out of touch and ungrounded your management team really is. Now get back under OJ's desk.

 

[CFIse]

They took a loss and don't be an idiot about it.

Well you clearly don't understand business financials - is there anything else you don't understand you'd like to embarass yourself over.

 

[CFIse]

OK.
First you state that the United contract and Delta dash contract were unprofitable (possibly because managements bids were unrealistic?), yet you later write that "It is STUNNINGLY difficult to lose money on fee for departure". It looks to me like Mesa managed to do it.

Mesa management said they were unprofitable, I don't believe they were unprofitable (well United anyway), they were less profitable than expected and the books were cooked to show them as unprofitable allowing the write-off. If you don't understand business financials don't play this game, you're out of your league.

You also claim that Mesa is being raped on APU overhauls. What are they paying vs. the average rate that a non-Mesa airline pays? If it is significantly higher, then why are they paying it? How many APU's have they had to overhaul?

Again - Mesa claimed they were being raped on APU overhauls, and I believe them, because I believe United insisted Mesa start fixing it's APUs to avoid delays and problems with ground power and air starts, not to mention passenger discomfort, although I doubt that was an issue with United. So Mesa suddenly had a lot of APUs to overhaul, any subcontractor faced with an excess of work and a desparate customer is going to up the price.

As for the Go! interisland venture.... I won't go there, other than to say that losses are losses, and no BOD or shareholder likes to see them. Go! to me simply shows how out of touch and ungrounded your management team really is. Now get back under OJ's desk.

Go!'s a money loser - they always said it was a money loser, but in the overall scheme of Mesa's financials it's not a big affect. I have my own ideas about why Mesa is operating go! in the islands, but they don't have anything to do with making money on that operation. I don't believe Mesa ever plans to make money on go!, it's partly vindictive as a part of their previous attempts to enter the market and partly to establish an operating plan to operate go! in other parts of the US.

 

[trachyte11]

I've heard from someone based in PHX that Mesa's US Air/AmWest flying is not going to be renewed. He said that some of it has already been decreased. Any truth to this?

 

[hyperboy]

CFIse NAIVE

Your a tool. I guess if we did not have GO we would have posted a profit? But WE DO and we DID NOT post a profit. Who are you? It is about as black and white as this. You either make money or you don't....WE DID NOT!

Just like everyone saying that if SWA did not hedge fuel they would not have been profitable all the past quarters but ,They did and they played the game correcty and made money.

They need to build more glass houses!

 

[CFIse]

Your a tool. I guess if we did not have GO we would have posted a profit? But WE DO and we DID NOT post a profit. Who are you? It is about as black and white as this. You either make money or you don't....WE DID NOT!

Well it's not black and white. In your simplistic mind you "lose money" if you have less money at the end of the quarter than you did at the start - but in reality the money that Mesa "lost" had been paid out months (in the case of the Delta Dash fleet) and years (in the case of United pay for play) before.

Business financials is not a cash based business - if your experience is based on trying to balance your checkbook and getting the math wrong, you're never going to understand this.

 

[flyflorida2001]

CFISE is a Mesa management troll. You should see some of the stupid ******************** he posts on the mesa forum. Ignore anything this toll says.

 

[BoilerUP]

Well you clearly don't understand business financials - is there anything else you don't understand you'd like to embarass yourself over.

"Accounting For Dummies" and a night at a Holiday Inn Express would do many folks good, Mesa pilot or otherwise.

Learning to read a 10-K or 10-Q and actually doing it when they are published goes a long way into understanding WTF is going on in an airline's business...

 

[Checknsix]

CFIse,

I don't get it. You believe that a one time write off, that takes a quarter negative, doesn't mean that Mesa is unprofitable. So if my company made $4 million net for three quarters, and then took a $24 million dollar "one time write off", you think that company is worth investing in??? You do understand that Mesa, like others, pays to get their codeshares...ie. loan to America West to get long term contract, $30 million to United to get their flying, engine maintenance contract to Delta to get their flying, and on and on...

You think that a company that defers maintenance as long as they can...for instance on something they consider non-essential like APU's...and then their codeshare tells them that, "Hey, we would like our passengers to actually have a comfortable cabin when they fly you," is somehow unfair to Mesa and it is not something they should have been prepared for???

Mesa ignores their core revenue generating business all day, every day. They spend more time jacking with GO!, China, and trying to collect the worst biggest collection of ragged out, mx intensive Dash 8's, to fly unprofitable runs in the Northeast. They completely ignored the union 9 months ago, when they were told that QOL issues needed to be addressed...that the growth was taking a very large toll on the pilot group. Now they have record numbers of pilots leaving every month...and have not taken any steps to address the attrition, other than sending Chief Pilots out on world tours to recruit 200 hour pilots. We are down to 1600 pilots and that will likely be closer to 1000-1100 pilots by December at the current levels of attrition.

Hope you can swim boy. This boat is sinking fast.

Ridiculous.

- Six

 

[CrownandCoke]

10-K or 10-Q

are those poker hands?

 

[Soverytired]

The thread was about the $24 Million loss and go! is really a small part of it. Aloha isn't going anywhere.

It may stick around for awhile, but I'm not really sure what's the point of it anymore.

I heard Aloha was supposedly quite close to running out of cash (within a week), but the United deal bought them as much time as they'll likely need.

Dumb for United, but smart for Aloha, and a stake in the heart of Go!.

Oh . . . Go will very likely lose the lawsuit from Aloha to boot. Expect a settlement on this one.

 

[Soverytired]

it's partly vindictive as a part of their previous attempts to enter the market and partly to establish an operating plan to operate go! in other parts of the US.

AKA Independence Air and ExpressJet; two less than stellar attempts to run an airline with crappy aircraft.


And those two had employee groups who had a great attitude and vested interest in survival. Mesa employee's just want to G.T.F. out A.S.A.P.

 

[Soverytired]

CFIse,


Mesa ignores their core revenue generating business all day, every day. They spend more time jacking with GO!, China, a

- Six

Heh. Speaking of China, someone told me the #1. purpose of a China operation is to make it extremely easy to embezzle money from the company, as all that out-of-country spending is going to be pretty hard to track.

China is corrupt as hell anyway, so I'm sure if the right palms are greased they'll play along.

It's the first thing about the China Op anyone has ever said that actually made some sense.

(speculation here folks, just speculation)

 

[CFIse]

I don't get it. You believe that a one time write off, that takes a quarter negative, doesn't mean that Mesa is unprofitable. So if my company made $4 million net for three quarters, and then took a $24 million dollar "one time write off", you think that company is worth investing in??? You do understand that Mesa, like others, pays to get their codeshares...ie. loan to America West to get long term contract, $30 million to United to get their flying, engine maintenance contract to Delta to get their flying, and on and on...

I've never said the company was profitable last quarter - I have said it was pro forma profitable - which is an indication that it will be profitable going forward. This is a one time event - sure they're buying Delta off by giving them the engine contract - but there is no lump sum payment for a future write-off involved in that. The America West loan is long gone.

Again - if you don't understand business accounting then you don't understand this, you don't understand any of it, and then you can sit there perfectly happy in your Mesa hating world thinking the company is going down the toilet. I am telling you that financially it is not going down the toilet, I'm trying to give you some information you can use, but if you're too dumb to see that what can I do?

You think that a company that defers maintenance as long as they can...for instance on something they consider non-essential like APU's...and then their codeshare tells them that, "Hey, we would like our passengers to actually have a comfortable cabin when they fly you," is somehow unfair to Mesa and it is not something they should have been prepared for???

Where did I pass an opinion on whether it was fair or reasonable? As a matter of opinion I think the codeshare customers should be holding Mesa to a set of standards since the company is clearly unable to hold itself to a reasonable set of standards. The FACT is that Mesa did not expect to have to fix the equipment and so had not budgeted for it - REGARDLESS those costs are included in the pro forma and while they reduce Mesa's profitability they don't make the company unprofitable.

Mesa ignores their core revenue generating business all day, every day. They spend more time jacking with GO!, China, and trying to collect the worst biggest collection of ragged out, mx intensive Dash 8's, to fly unprofitable runs in the Northeast.

I don't know, and neither do you, what Delta's position on the Dashs was, Mesa clearly stated in the past that the Dash ramp-up was done at a loss to consolidate their position with Delta. It was a clusterf*!k, no question about that, but it was a clusterf*!k long before Delta announced it was handing Mesa 14 CRJ900s to operate, so how do you explain that?

They completely ignored the union 9 months ago, when they were told that QOL issues needed to be addressed...that the growth was taking a very large toll on the pilot group. Now they have record numbers of pilots leaving every month...and have not taken any steps to address the attrition, other than sending Chief Pilots out on world tours to recruit 200 hour pilots. We are down to 1600 pilots and that will likely be closer to 1000-1100 pilots by December at the current levels of attrition.

People are leaving because there are opportunities elsewhere. The problem with you, and most of the pilot group, is you don't have a clue about how Mesa runs its business - and when they run their business in a way you don't understand you get all upset about it and start spouting off. Mesa wants captains to move on - if you're a 5 year captain at Mesa they think they're paying you too much and it's time for you to leave. You may not like that, but if you took the job at Mesa because you thought it was going to be an excellent career then you're the idiot, not the company. Now the FO attrition is inconvenient but the company believes it'll just go out and recruit a bunch more people and replace them.

Now - as a matter of OPINION that seems like a business plan fraught with danger, but that's Mesa's business plan, it's always been their plan, and if that's coming as a shock to you then you're not a very smart person now are you? That's not going to change - Mesa doesn't want to improve the QOL of their pilots because if they do they're afraid more of the high paid captains will stick around and cost them more money. That's a trade off the company is willing to take. You may not like it, speaking as a pilot I'm not too keen on it myself, but at least I was smart enough to know what I was getting into, you apparently were not. You might not think that plan will be successful, I actually happen to think it will eventually work even though it makes things precarious for the next 6-12 months, but since neither of us is actually running Mesa what we think doesn't matter. What Mesa management thinks matters, and they think it's going to work.

People seem to think because I'm explaining facts to them that I'm somehow in Mesa's managment's pocket. I've got my problems with Mesa just like everybody else. I'm smart enough to know that "losing money" is not a problem at Mesa, and therefore if "losing money" could give me leverage, I'm not going to get any leverage since it's not true. If you're going to base your next set of decisions, how you vote in union business and other activity on the fact that Mesa is not profitable you're making a big mistake - Mesa as a going concern is profitable. At Mesa the pilot group is going to have to pick it's battles - when you don't understand the basic business approach Mesa uses you're going to pick the wrong battles to fight.

 

[CFIse]

AKA Independence Air and ExpressJet; two less than stellar attempts to run an airline with crappy aircraft.

And those two had employee groups who had a great attitude and vested interest in survival. Mesa employee's just want to G.T.F. out A.S.A.P.

But my opinion is that Mesa eventually wants to run go! as a discount airline in the US running larger aircraft - 737s, 320s or possibly CRJ1000s or whatever Embraer comes out with after the 190. But whatever it is with enough seats to make it's operating cost reasonable.

How the company makes that transition since it's currently reliant on it's codeshare partners for it's revenue is hard for me to see, but *I* think that's what they want to do, and HI is the opportunity to building a holding place where there is no codeshare issue.

I could be wrong. I agree with everybody else, in and of itself go! in HI is a license to lose money, so you imagine there's something else going on, the question is what is it?

 

[CFIse]

Heh. Speaking of China, someone told me the #1. purpose of a China operation is to make it extremely easy to embezzle money from the company, as all that out-of-country spending is going to be pretty hard to track.

China is corrupt as hell anyway, so I'm sure if the right palms are greased they'll play along.

It's the first thing about the China Op anyone has ever said that actually made some sense.

(speculation here folks, just speculation)

But it makes so much sense - the JV is a Chinese JV, not subject to any of those nasty US laws or interfering entities like the SEC.