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

PHOENIX, Sept. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Mesa Air Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: MESA) reported its preliminary traffic figures for August 2008. Year-over-year available seat miles decreased 14.84% in August 2008 to 646,921,000 compared to 759,693,000 in August 2007. Revenue passenger miles decreased 13.88% from 593,914,000 in 2007 to 511,452,000 in 2008. Passenger enplanements decreased 24.48% from 1,403,118 in August 2007 to 1,059,603 in August 2008. Year-over-year load factor for the month of August was 79.06% in 2008 compared to 78.18% in 2007. Mesa's on-time performance for August was 75.9%.

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go!'s preliminary traffic figures for August 2008 indicate that its operations generated 15.4 million available seat miles, 10.9 million revenue passenger miles and 75,037 passengers, compared with 65,736 in August 2007. Load factor for August 2008 was 70.66%, compared to 71.49% for the same period in 2007. Hawai'i's low fare airline recorded an on-time performance rate of 82%.

    August Results                         Aug-08        Aug-07       Change
    Revenue Passenger Miles (000)         511,452       593,914      -13.88%
    Available Seat Miles (000)            646,921       759,693      -14.84%
    Passengers Carried                  1,059,603     1,403,118      -24.48%
    Load Factor                            79.06%        78.18%      0.9 pts

    Year-to-date Results                   YTD 08        YTD 07       Change
    Revenue Passenger Miles (000)       4,055,635      4,732,176     -14.30%
    Available Seat Miles (000)          5,383,150      6,128,567     -12.16%
    Passengers Carried                  8,954,694     11,208,497     -20.11%
    Load Factor                            75.34%         77.22%    (1.9) pts

"The reduction in flying during this period was primarily due to the temporary elimination by Delta of our 50-seat ERJ-145 flying which is expected to be progressively reinstated during September and October," said Mesa Air Group Chairman and CEO, Jonathan Ornstein. Adding, "I would like once more to thank our employees for their superb effort and continued support."

Mesa currently operates 159 aircraft with over 800 daily system departures to 125 cities, 38 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.

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