Mesa Air Group, Inc.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Mesa Airlines Q3 investor conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session. At that time, please press Star 1, unmute your phone and record your name at the prompt. This call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Doug Cooper, Head of Investor Relations. Mr. Cooper, you may begin.

Thank you, Christina, and welcome, everyone, to Mesa's earnings conference call for its fiscal third quarter ended June 30th. On the call with me today are Jonathan Ornstein, Mesa's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Brad Rich, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Michael Lotz, President, and Tork Zubek, Chief Financial Officer, as well as other members of the management team. Following our prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session for the sell-side analysts. We will also want to remind everyone on the call today that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements that are based on the company's current expectations and are not a guarantee of future performance. There could be significant risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected by the forward-looking statements, including the risk factors discussed in our reports on file with the SEC. We undertake no duty to update any forward-looking statements. In comparing results today, we will be adjusting all periods to exclude special items. Please refer to our fiscal third quarter earnings press release which is available on our Web site for the reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jonathan for his opening remarks. Jonathan?

Thank you, Doug, and thank you everyone for joining us today. Let's get down to business. As anticipated, while traffic remains strong and our partners continue to request more hours, the industry-wide pilot shortage impeded our ability to meet that demand. We continue to do everything we can to mitigate the impact of the shortage. However, there's only so much we can do given our financial capability. and the overwhelmingly negative fundamental issues created by the so-called 1500-hour rule. With greater barriers to entry to become a commercial pilot in the form of increased time requirements and higher costs, we have seen pilot shortages and corresponding elevated wage levels, ultimately leading to higher fares for consumers and decreased levels of air service. With the greater diminished supply of entry-level pilots and the greater post-COVID demand for pilots at the major airlines, the regional industry is caught in an unprecedented squeeze and the highest levels of pilot attrition in history and a shrinking pool of qualified commercial pilots without the necessary amount of hours. Strangely enough, there is, in fact, actually a huge pool of pilots that have their commercial licenses but are unable to fly commercially in scheduled service. Unfortunately, these pilots oftentimes need over 1,000 additional hours to fly commercially, which their license would imply they already have the ability to do. Mesa is focusing on this group as a future resource. We are now looking at opportunities to accelerate their development and accumulation of hours within the constraints of the 1,500-hour rule. In addition, we are exploring options to enhance pilot retention. While it is important to note this problem is broader than just pilots, We are also making progress with other labor groups to improve attraction and retention. One significant benefit we were able to implement this quarter was announcing that all MESA pilots, including pilots flying in our American Eagle and DHL operations, could participate in United Airlines Career Development Program, AVA, which provides a path to employment at United. We believe this will enhance recruiting and retention of pilots. This may well be the fastest way for a pilot entering commercial aviation to advance to a major airline while giving us visibility into future transitions. Turning to our DH cargo operation, our third Boeing 737-400 aircraft entered revenue service. While the growth of our cargo business has been somewhat slower than initially anticipated, going forward, we believe cargo has the potential to be an increasingly important part of our business. With that, I will hand it over to Brad Rich to go over more of the details of an update and an update on our operational performance this quarter.