Mesa Air Group, Inc. Reports February Traffic Including go! Hawai'i's Low Fare Airline

PHOENIX, March 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Mesa Air Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MESA) reported its preliminary traffic figures for February 2008. Year-over-year available seat miles decreased 8.10% in February 2008 to 627,829 compared to 683,145 in February 2007. Revenue passenger miles decreased 11.61% from 506,752 in 2007 to 447,931 in 2008. Passenger enplanements decreased 12.81% from 1,199,184 in February 2007 to 1,045,519 in February 2008. Year-over-year load factor for the month of February was 71.35% in 2008 compared to 74.18% in 2007.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990210/LAW065)

go!'s preliminary traffic figures for February 2008 indicate that its operations generated 10.97 million available seat miles, 7.23 million revenue passenger miles and 50,090 passenger enplanements, resulting in a load factor of 65.92%, compared to 60.54% in 2007. Hawai'i's low fare leader also recorded an on-time performance rate of 82.4% and an overall completion factor of 99.9% for February 2008.

February Results Feb-08 Feb-07 Change
Revenue Passenger Miles (000) 447,931 506,752 -11.61%
Available Seat Miles (000) 627,829 683,145 -8.10%
Passengers Carried 1,045,519 1,199,184 -12.81%
Load Factor 71.35% 74.18% (2.8) pts

Year-to-date Results YTD 08 YTD 07 Change
Revenue Passenger Miles (000) 914,976 1,044,492 -12.40%
Available Seat Miles (000) 1,318,034 1,465,302 -10.05%
Passengers Carried 2,131,297 2,466,598 -13.59%
Load Factor 69.42% 71.28% (1.9) pts

"Severe winter weather in the mid-west and north east of the country impacted our operation during February. We would like to thank all of our people around the country who did an outstanding job in often challenging conditions," said Mesa Air Group Chairman and CEO, Jonathan Ornstein. "go!, our independent Hawai'i operation, achieved 99.9% reliability and we are delighted with our February load factor increase, particularly in light of the higher year over year average fares we experienced as well," Mr. Ornstein added.

Mesa currently operates 183 aircraft with over 1,000 daily system departures to 157 cities, 42 states, the District of Columbia, Canada, the Bahamas and Mexico. Mesa operates as Delta Connection, US Airways Express and United Express under contractual agreements with Delta Air Lines, US Airways and United Airlines, respectively, and independently as Mesa Airlines and go!. In June 2006 Mesa launched inter-island Hawaiian service as go! This operation links Honolulu to the neighbor island airports of Hilo, Kahului, Kona and Lihue. The Company, founded by Larry and Janie Risley in New Mexico in 1982, has approximately 5,000 employees and was awarded Regional Airline of the Year by Air Transport World magazine in 1992 and 2005. Mesa is a member of the Regional Airline Association and Regional Aviation Partners.

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Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990210/LAW065
AP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/
PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com
Source: Mesa Air Group, Inc.

CONTACT: Paul Skellon, Vice President Corporate Communications of Mesa
Air Group, Inc., +1-602-685-4162, paul.skellon@mesa-air.com

Web site: http://www.mesa-air.com/

2008-03-06 19:03:29 0306924 PRNEWSWIRE