Pinnacle Airlines Corp, parent of regionals Pinnacle Airlines, Colgan Air and Mesaba Aviation, has reported a first-quarter loss of $3 million, which is down on the $1.7 million profit posted in the year-ago period.
The gloomy results were blamed on bad weather as well as costs associated with the company’s new pilot contract with the Air Line Pilots Association ratified in February that increased “pilot compensation and benefits costs by $2.1 million for the quarter”.
Revenue increased 43% to $298.2 million, while costs rose by 49% to $292 million. Operating profit was on $6.3 million, a decline of 50% from $12.7 posted in the previous year period. This was due to the acquisition of Mesaba on July 1, 2010 and the acquisition of 14 Q400s since July 2010.
Consolidated traffic rose 64% to 1.95 billion RPMs on a 68% increase in capacity to 2.85 billion ASMs, producing a load factor of 68.4%, down 1.8 points.