Bond

Clearly the BOD disagrees with your flawed assessment. Butting heads is a bit of myth, Jeff Misner who was the driving force behind the regional maneuvering for CAL was convinced that they needed to diversify their regional feed regardless of whatever offer might have been on table from XJT, this was true 2 1/2 years ago, and it was true up until the sudden announcement of his retirement this past month (hmmm?).

As far as growth by comparison, you clearly disregard the fact that we grew quicker than everyone (still have more airframes than most), and stopped at 274 frames as required by the CPA at the time (and the CBA between CAL and their pilots). Ream himself has stated multiple time that maintaining the current fleet type makes the most financial sense as we already have in place the infrastructure to support such, and any additional aircraft or "growth" is not a good investment in the current market, unless it involves a long term commitment. How about the famous "Nation" clause in CAL's CPA, how much growth do you expect us to do under such limiting circumstances. Delta was clearly the exception, I give our management credit for thinking outside the box and striking a pro-rated deal on all frames above 10 (see the clause).

Again, you bring a very naive, "I'm an investor" mentality to the equation, you haven't bother with the facts. Our management team has delivered on everything they told us they would do, which speaks volumes compared to the rest of the industry including the majors.

dontsurf

interesting points, and i don't know toiletduck or what his status is, but he does speak precisely about what a shareholder, major or otherwise, would be interested in. of course all airline stocks are down considerably with the price of oil, but expressjet's most recent 10Q is far outside the maintstream. there's a couple of disturbing things in there, highlighted in other posts and in fact in other media than this forum, that any shareholder should be very concerned about. especially if anyone decides to buy a bunch of stock and become an "activist" shareholder. there's nothing "naive" about those kind of people. they're the ones that make things happen - that is to say, make entire boards and c-suite rosters change in a heartbeat - that affect more lives than anything the pilots can do. just food for thought.

and yes, such things can happen to any publicly traded company, like skywest, so i'm not sitting here saying "never", but it's not us right now, it's expressjet.

Bond

This comment coming from a cult following skywest pilot........a bit comical and without any facts to back it up as usual.

Dash8Pilot

Never use the term "iron-clad" in relation to any collective bargaining agreement at any airline. The crap that goes on at Mesa and the sight of any GoJet aircraft should be enough to prove that there is no such thing as "iron-clad" in this industry. Sometimes it just comes down to who has better lawyers.

dojetdriver

Wasn't there a shareholders or a BOD conference call recently at XJT? That call was allocated for an hour, lasted 20 minutes. The SKY thing wasn't even mentioned.

Bond

Again my friend you're stating the obvious. I have stock at CAL and I'm worried! It's the current state of the industry, and our management is doing a great job fighting to ensure the future of the company whether it envolves consolidation or staying independent.

I appreciate your concern, but nothing really is going on at XJT. It's all speculation. Talk to me in a month, we should all know more about the state of our company, for one thing, we'll know whether we have a future with CAL or not.

tpersuit

Yep, and they elected Jim Ream to another term and there was no fight. No faith in Ream huh?

For anyone that questions this, go to expressjet.com and go to investors. Listen to the ExpressJet Holdings, Inc. 2008 Annual Meeting webcast. You will get a good feeling and how much the BOD likes Ream.

tpersuit

As for our 1st quarter earnings, there is a little more to it...
The $31 million loss was based of taking a $9 million loss on our Auction Rate Securities (ASRs) if we were to sell them. That is what a recent offer to buy them were at. However we did not sell them, so the actual loss was $22 million. If the company decides it needs the cash they will sell the ARSs for a loss, but they have already claimed it in the 1st quarter, so it won't reflect on any future quarters.

The loss of $22 million was with the last of our couple of training classes finishing up, we have had none since February. We had a load factor on Branded of 50% for the months of January and February. We had a pulldown on Branded from 200 flights/day to 160/flights a day starting April 1st, the start of the 2nd quarter. We also offered 150 COLA's(Company Offered Leaves of Absence), some of which some fairly senior Captains wanted and were given, starting April 1st, the start of the 2nd quarter.

So my question to those of you who think we burning cash is this: With all these cost saving measures that were taken April 1st, how is our loss going to be greater than $22 million in the 2nd quarter? Also, I would dare to say it will be greatly lower than that, unless something else hits us pretty hard. That said, I really want to see what our 2nd quarter numbers are before I jump to any conclusions. If we are still losing a lot at that point, then I will concede the point, but the company has already taken plenty of strategic moves to lower costs. That said, our April load factor for Branded was 62%, which is much better than it was in 2007, so our revenue stream will be way higher, and I doubt we would lose more money than in 2007. Wait and see what our Load Factor is for May and June and we shall see which way we are headed. We also are moving 11 more aircraft to our Charter division, which has very high margins, starting at the end of August. I think our management has a good plan and I hope we can succeed with it.

HercDriver130

I think most of us here hope XJT works its way out of this corner.

dojetdriver

Me too. And I'm not in the now as much as our reps that are sworn to secrecy at this point.

But I think all that happened is XJT got out of one corner, but face the strong possibility of being backed into another at some point. How bad new corner might be, who knows? But I don't think that when our MEC decided that they can't agree with SKW that CAL just threw their hands up in the air and said "Well, that does it, XJT turned down the buyout. That was out last, best, and final attempt".

There is the strong possibility that another bullet may be coming our way.