Jonathan Ornstein will finally get around to the Mesa Air Group September (Q4 2007) conference call, now almost four months late. Rumors abound what will be discussed. Listen to it live at Yahoo! Finance. Monday Morning Jan 14, 2008, 1:00 pm Eastern time.Â
go! Airlines continues to bleed Mesa of precious cash. Mesa’s experiment of a viable “stand alone airline” has failed. Let’s see how wrong Ornstein was about this “experiment”. All following quotes come from late 2005 when go! Airlines was first announced as “Project Hele” or at that time, more commonly known as “Mesa’s new Hawaii airline”
Jonathan Ornstein; “We can fly planes empty and cover it. The Hawaii operation costs about $20 million to $25 million a year — we can lose that much money. We can cover it.”
“We think the inter-island market has the potential for long-term profits,” Ornstein said. We look at it as something fun to do for the company. It is independent, which makes it a more interesting operation. “It is not as if we are putting the company at risk”
“it will tie up only 2.5 percent of Mesa’s capacity. Because we have a very profitable operation on the mainland, we can operate aircraft there for a very, very, very long time. We think that with the 50-seaters, we won’t do much worse than break even.”
“We will transition to 90-seat or larger aircraft when they become available - that may be 12 to 18 months down the road depending upon market demand,” Ornstein said, adding that the carrier may fly B737s if there is enough demand - and if it has the labor flexibility. “We know that the 50-seat is not always the most appropriate,”
Ornstein acknowledges it won’t be a “slam dunk” but said Mesa is not betting the company on go! like regional airline Atlantic Coast Airlines did when it severed its airline partnerships and overnight became Independence Air. The airline went out of business earlier this year.
“We’re doing this (go! Airlines) on a very limited basis,” he said. “It’s 1 1/2% of our capacity, and it won’t become a whole lot more than that unless its successful.”
Let’s see who else was wrong about go! Airline, described by Jonathan Ornstein as “something fun to do for the company”.
- Mesa’s BOD; “We [the board] trust him, and he’s proven to be worthy of our trust,” said Maurice Parker, a director on Mesa’s board since 1998. “We think this is a great move for Mesa, and it’s going to be profitable.”
- Mesa’s Stockholders; Ornstein comes to Hawaii with deep pockets — an operational cash flow of $120 million — and the indulgence of stockholders who like the fact that he runs a profitable airline in this era of bankruptcies.
- Regional Aviation News; Mesa Air Group [MESA] will launch a new carrier tailored for the inter-island travel of the Hawaiian islands, serving five major cities. It may not look anything like the current model of a regional carrier. It may look like a throwback to the old independent, commuter carriers. Or it could be the airline of the future.
Those of us not working on Monday should listen to the conference call live on Yahoo! Finance where we can find out how much longer the “airline of the future” will last on lies and con games. For those of our readers still working for this toilet of an operation, join the 500 other Mesa pilots that quit last year and get on with life!
I finish this weekends article with this November 2005 quote from Ornstein;
“Mesa CEO Jonathan Ornstein said Aloha’s demise would clearly be good for business… Ornstein told PBN. “But I won’t deny that if a significant part of the capacity were to go away, it clearly would make our business a lot better. No doubt about that.”
Ornstein’s recklessly bet all of Mesa, formerly a $1 Billion a year operation on the go! attempt to bankrupt Aloha Airlines. The final bill which includes lying to Federal judges, suing girls, ex-employees and throwing best friends under the bus with ridiculous tall tales like the “porn at 40 feet” defense is still open and has yet to be finally tallied.
Finally, our winner of 2005 predictions on go!, the CEO of Hawaiian Airlines,
Mark Dunkerly; Hawaiian’s CEO, said he has no doubts on how that scene will play out. “Hawaii’s seen a third interisland competitor before and it has always ended the same way,” he said, referring to the unsuccessful efforts by Mahalo, Discover and others. “I’ve no doubt that the reshowing of the same movie will have the same ending. This is a declining market and the idea that somehow there’s room for an enormous capacity is fanciful.”
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