Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Mesa Airlines - A Bright Future with New Beginning

Mesa Airlines has so much history dating back to the 80's that you would be able to write a book on it. And of course, like every new or established airline, they had to work hard to grow and create new operations. It wasn't until the terrible events of September 11 2001 that Mesa Airlines really took control of their future. Even though the airline had to enter bankruptcy briefly, they have maintained profitable quarters each year since the end of 2001. The company has earned their wings through many battles, and their corporate leadership is perhaps as good as can be found anywhere.
Mesa Air Group is the main company that has bunch of smaller airlines under its wing, including Mesa Airlines. The number of aviation personnel working for the Mesa Group is at a little under three thousand people. The number of assets that Mesa holds is currently at around 87 airliners, and they all operating in US based destinations. They have an amazing 465 departures operating each day in almost 100 cities including Mexico and Canada. Annual revenue Group wide is in excess of one billion USD which is impressive considering the airline started with just one turboprop aircraft.
One plane that flew between two cities was all that Mesa Airlines had in the very beginning. After 10 years of business, Mesa Airlines had 38 planes operating between 63 cities in the United States. They also began to trade on the stock exchange as they changed from a private company to a public one. Midwest Express Airlines and Mesa Airways agreed to a partnership of code sharing. This allowed Mesa to spread its wings and serve people flying out of Milwaukee in Wisconsin. Mesa obtained a very valuable code sharing partnership with United Airlines, letting them create United Express which let them fly out of Denver, Colorado.
Mesa got into an agreement with the well known airline United Airlines in 2003. The meaning of this code share was to let Mesa Airlines spark up services running from a few new airports, like O'Hare in Chicago and Denver. A new sub-brand airline, called United Express Airlines, was conceived from this deal. The only aircraft that United Express are running operations with are Bombardiers. By the end of 2009 all Dash 8 planes had been taken out of service, which was simply an option made by the management.
To fully appreciate Mesa Airlines you must take a step back and look at their entire history. The airline has had ups, like expanding, and downs, like contracting, as part of decisions made by the company. All airlines keep a close eye on national and global economic trends, and they adapt to the present situation. This means that often there will be booms within the company and inevitably busts as well. But what is interesting is the way airlines work with each other in the form of business partnerships and alliances. In doing this the airlines become stronger, which makes sense.

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