SkyWest, the Utah-based parent of regionals SkyWest Airlines, Atlantic Southeast Airlines and ExpressJet, has reported a first-quarter net loss of $11.1 million. This is the first time the airline group has posted a net loss.
Although this was well down on the same period last year, where the airline group posted a $15 million profit, it was better than SkyWest’s predictions. Bradford Rich, executive vice president and CFO said that the gloomy results were a direct result of the severe winter storms early in the year which meant the airlines flew significantly less.
Revenues for the first quarter was up 37% to $866 million, driven by the addition of ExpressJet. Expenses rose 47% to $865.7 million, which put the group’s operating income on $227,000, much less than the $42.4 million operating profit in same quarter a year ago.
Thanks to the ExpressJet acquisition, consolidated traffic jumped 48% to 6.4 billion RPMs on a 53% rise in capacity to 8.6 billion ASMs, producing a load factor of 74.9%, down 2.2 points. Yield dipped 8.4% to 13.1 cents as RASM lowered 9.8% to 10.1 cents and CASM decreased 4.6% to 10.3 cents.