Mesa Air Group announced it had completed the sale of six of a surplus fifteen CRJ900s, and ten of thirty surplus CRJ engines, as part of its Regional Aircraft Securitization Program (RASPRO) finance lease.
The Mesa Airlines (YV, Phoenix Sky Harbor) parent had previously agreed to sell the 15 airframes and 30 engines to, respectively, two separate third parties. One agreement was reported to be for 30 engines for a total of USD19.5 million, while the second deal was for fifteen CRJ900s, without engines, for a total of USD18.8 million.
The carrier expected these transactions to be completed by the end of September 2024, with negative net cash resulting from them of approximately USD12.1 million.
Previously, the RASPRO finance lease carried a USD50.4 million obligation for Mesa Airlines to purchase these assets at the end of the lease in March 2024, after the company agreed to reclassify the 15 aircraft from operating leases to finance leases in December 2022. However, Mesa reached an agreement to fulfil the purchase obligation between May and September 2024, reducing its obligation to USD27.3 million.
“Addressing the RASPRO lease has been one of the top priorities for our surplus asset sale efforts over the past year-and-a-half. This is a significant financial obligation that we are putting behind us, and we are increasingly able to prioritise the future of the company,” said Jonathan Ornstein, Mesa chairman and chief executive.
The ch-aviation fleets module shows that Mesa Airlines operates a fleet of 123 aircraft, including two B737-400(SF)s, twelve CRJ900s, twenty-five CRJ900ERs, thirteen CRJ900LRs, and seventy-one E175s.
ch-aviation has reached out to Mesa Airlines for comment on the registration numbers of the fifteen CRJs involved in the RASPRO finance lease.
In parallel, the airline has also sold eleven CRJ900s to a third party.
Regains bourse compliance, pre-orders TriFan 600
The parent entity also recently announced that the Nasdaq Stock Market had verified and confirmed that, for ten successive business days, the closing bid price of Mesa Air’s common stock was at or above the USD1 minimum per share threshold. This has allowed the carrier to regain compliance with the minimum bid-price requirement after failing to meet it in November 2023.
Further, Mesa Air Group was revealed to have entered into an aircraft purchase agreement for 100 TriFan 600s, a fixed-wing vertical lift crossover aeroplane (VLCA) that can take off and land like a helicopter and can carry up to six passengers developed by its holding XTI Aerospace. If fully exercised, the deal's value could represent up to around USD1 billion in revenue for XTI Aerospace. The aircraft is still under development and has not yet been certified.
XTI Aerospace began publicly trading on the Nasdaq on March 13, 2024, following the closing of a merger between XTI Aircraft Company and Inpixon. Mesa received 283,734 shares of XTI Aerospace common stock and holds warrants to purchase another 189,156 shares.
