Can you say KARMA?  The long awaited bankruptcy of Mesa Airlines appears to be here as Jonathan Ornstein’s airline has been forced into Chapter 11.  The filing this morning is reported to allow Mesa the ability to restructure debts as well as shed unused aircraft without financial obligations. 

Mesa says that the bankruptcy will not affect [...]

United Airlines just last week cancelled an agreement for regional flying under the United Express brand with Mesa Airlines ending flying with that regional carrier for 20 plus regional jets.  Now, this week, United has announced a new regional flying partnership with ExpressJet, a much more efficient and ethical operation than Mesa. 

ExpressJet will operate 22 [...]

October was yet another great month for Hawaiian Airlines, the only true inter-Hawaiian airline with a traffic increase of 8.3% year over year.  The airlines load factor also rose 2.4 percentage points to a great 85.3%. 

But while Hawaiian was enjoying another month of recovery and great results, their only inter-island competitor now, Go!, a subsidiary of [...]

September 2009 proved to be a good month for the nation’s airlines posting the best on-time rate in six years.  Combined, the airlines achieved a 86.2 percent on-time rate with that percentage of flight arriving at their destination within 15 minutes of their scheduled time.  The ratings and airline rankings are provided by the United [...]

United Airlines has let an agreement for regional flying with Mesa to expire resulting in yet another blow to the beleagured regional airline.  United Airlines will no longer utilize 26 CRJ-200 50-passenger regional jets operated by Mesa Airlines for their connection service by April 2010. 

Bad news continues to work against Mesa Airlines.  It seems their string of [...]

Mokulele, owned by Republic Airways and go!, owned by Mesa Airlines joined forces today to cooperate but operate both Hawaiian inter-island carriers as one entity, but under both brand names.  Some details of the deal are still uncertain, but the terms include Mesa owning 75% of the combined carrier and Republic owning 25%. 

This comes after go! [...]

Unfortunately, Delta Airlines today lost another court battle in its effort to rid itself of the embattled Mesa Airlines regional operation.  Mesa operates 50 seat Embraer ERJ-145’s for Delta on certain connection routes, and will be able to continue for the time being.

Back in early 2008, Delta attempted to cancel the regional flying contract it [...]