to the Mesa Air Group Q4 Investor Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session. At that time, please press star one, unmute your phone, and record your name at the prompt. This call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Susan Donofrio, Head of Investor Relations. Ms. Donofrio, you may begin. Thank you, operator, and welcome everyone to Mesa's Earnings Call for its Fourth Fiscal Quarter ended September 30th. This call is being recorded and simultaneously webcast. A replay of this call can be found on our website. On the call with me today are Jonathan Ornstein, Mesa's Chairman and CEO; Brad Rich, EVP and COO; Michael Lotz, President; and Torque Zubeck, CFO, 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. I also wanted to remind everyone on the call 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 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 fourth fiscal quarter earnings release, which is available on our website for the reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures. With that, I will turn it over to Jonathan for his opening remarks. Thank you, Susan. Obviously, this was a difficult quarter for Mesa. Who would have anticipated that coming out of COVID would be more difficult than going into it? As Brad and Torque will cover in more detail, our significantly higher seat costs and span times were the primary driver. Larry Risley, founder of Mesa and my mentor, once told me, "In the airline business, something happens every year that happens every 10 years." Beginning in 2020, something happened that happens once a century. The aviation operating environment has been dominated by the pandemic, resulting in massive fluctuations in demand, higher attrition, inflationary pressures, and supply chain disruption. This has presented a set of circumstances unlike what we have seen before that will require innovation and cooperation to address successfully. While we believe industry fundamentals remain intact for the long term, our expectations is that 2022 is likely to be a pandemic transition year. I'd like to thank all of our employees for their dedication throughout the pandemic as we work through this tough environment and the federal government for the PSP program that allowed us to keep all of our people fully employed. Since it is the end of the fiscal year, I would like to go over some of this year's highlights. First, we added 20 Embraer 175 aircraft to our United Express operation. We put in place a new contract for American to operate 40 of our CRJ900s for the next 5 years. We leased 20 CRJ700s to GoJet, another United Express operator, for a 9-year term. We successfully launched our 737 cargo operation with DHL, and in partnership with United, we entered into agreements with electric aircraft manufacturers Archer Aviation and Heart Aerospace. We believe this will lead to significant long-term growth opportunities and make us the industry leaders in green aviation technology. Archer's electric vertical takeoff aircraft is designed for convenient, economical, and low carbon transportation to United's hub of airports in congested urban environments like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. As part of the transaction, Mesa made an equity investment in the company and received warrants. As of the close on Tuesday, the value of our investment is approximately $15 million on a cost basis of $5 million. We also entered into a purchase agreement for another 40 aircraft and 20 options, with deliveries expecting to begin in 2025. Another significant benefit we see is that these small aircraft provide a pathway for our new pilots entering the industry to fly our larger regional jets. In another green initiative, we made an investment in Heart Aerospace alongside United Airlines and Breakthrough Energy Ventures led by Bill Gates. In addition to our investment, we received warrants and entered into a purchase agreement for 100 aircraft and 50 on option, with deliveries scheduled to begin in 2026. Heart Aerospace is located in Gothenburg, Sweden, plans to be the first provider of all-electric 19-seat commercial regional aircraft. Mesa had previously been the largest operator of 19-seat aircraft, and it is our hope that these highly efficient, environmentally friendly aircraft will allow us to reintroduce service to dozens of cities that lost commercial service over the last 20 years. For example, Farmington, New Mexico, our former headquarters at one time had over 40 flights a day to 5 destinations and currently has no commercial air service. As a result, the 45,000 people of Farmington have been effectively cut off from the national air transportation system. Heart's ES-19 aircraft will reintroduce rural aviation to cities like this with clean, efficient, safe, and reliable transportation. Our investment in these two companies are designed to position Mesa to be the first regional airline to fly electric aircraft and be in the forefront of decarbonizing air travel and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. This will allow Mesa to have significant growth opportunities and continue to be a leader in introducing new technology to regional aviation. To put this in perspective, Morgan Stanley has estimated that the EVTOL market could grow to $9 trillion when it is fully developed, and we intend on being at the forefront of this development. We have also entered into an agreement with SkyDrop, formerly known as Flirtey, to operate four drones with an option to acquire up to 500 in total. We believe SkyDrop is one of the most technically advanced precision drone delivery systems in the world, with its initial focus on food delivery. We are excited about introducing drone delivery and think there is a huge potential market. While carefully limiting our risk, we believe we are pioneering an exciting and potentially high-growth industry of the future. Subsequent to year-end, we finalized our agreement with Gramercy Associates Ltd., based in London, to develop a European-based joint venture regional airline. Mesa owns 49% of the new venture. The joint venture will be based in Malta, and the certification is expected to be completed in the first half of 2022. We are excited at the potential to bring our regional business model overseas. I'd like to touch on the overall labor situation and the impact of potential shortages going forward. Brad and Tork will be explaining in more detail, but while we are navigating through an uncertain demand environment caused by COVID in 2020-2021, the shortages of pilots driven by the federally mandated 1,500-hour rule and now exacerbated by early retirements at the major carriers will require our largest focus over the near term. This is an industry-wide problem that needs to be addressed cooperatively with our partners, the FAA, and the federal government, as well as our employees. In response, we increased our recruiting and training efforts back in April and are looking at other strategic initiatives to respond to this potential pilot labor shortage. We believe we are laying the foundation for a strong future by strengthening our airline partnerships and positioning ourselves at the forefront of environmentally friendly electric aviation. Throughout our history, we have always worked together to come up with creative solutions when we are faced with near-term hurdles and believe this time will be no exception. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Brad to provide an update on our operational performance this quarter. Thank you, Jonathan, and good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We remain focused on the health and safety of our people and our customers. As you would expect, we continue to follow the CDC's latest guidance and are working cooperatively with our major partners to ensure consistency across our network. Our partnerships with United and American remain the cornerstone of our business, and we are committed to not only meeting their performance and capacity objectives, but remain flexible and responsive to often rapidly changing industry conditions. We are pleased to see demand for air travel recovering. In the September quarter, we flew 94,868 block hours, which is a 64.6% increase from last year and an 11.4% above last quarter. Our combined controllable completion factor was 99.7% compared to 100% a year ago. Our current production is below our 2019 levels, primarily driven by our reduction in flying for American as a result of our smaller fleet under contract. Looking ahead to 2022, while demand has been recovering, there continues to be uncertainty as new variants of COVID-19 arise. Our ability to meet our airline partners' demand will likely be dependent upon the severity of the pandemic. Additionally, our industry continues to face significant obstacles, often magnified by the impact of COVID. This includes the rapid changes in demand, employee retention and hiring, increases in the cost of heavy maintenance, often due to supply chain issues and increasing labor costs, and a more expensive overall operating environment due to inflationary pressures. That being said, while we remain focused on solving these difficulties, we are not immune to these industry-wide issues. Let me discuss a few of the issues. In spite of issues obtaining parts and materials, the primary factor driving increased scheduled heavy maintenance expenses is the volume of scheduled C checks, which are at historical highs, and aircraft interior refurbishment upgrades. This also lengthened the time span of our heavy checks, thus impeding our ability to return our aircraft into service and to add additional aircraft into heavy maintenance. The result has been a reduction in the number of spare aircraft to support daily operations. We anticipate elevated costs and C check times will remain in place into the next fiscal year as the supply chain recovers. It's important to note that these issues are primarily impacting our CRJ900 fleet. Regarding our United operations, our E175 fleet remains at 80 aircraft. Our controllable completion factor remained strong throughout the quarter at 99.8%. Our United performance has consistently placed us in the top-tier ranking versus our peers, and this quarter was no exception. We have removed all of the CRJ700s from our operations, and we continue the transition process of leasing these 20 CRJ700 aircraft to GoJet Airlines as part of the previously announced agreement ending in 2030. Fourteen of the aircraft have been delivered as of September 30, 2021, with 4 additional aircraft transitioning in the December quarter, and the 2 remaining aircraft will be delivered by the end of March 2022. I'd like to provide a quick update on our American operation, which consists entirely of CRJ900s. Last quarter, we mentioned the issues we faced with our CRJ900 fleet. These aircraft were particularly impacted by parts shortages and the timing of heavy maintenance events. Additionally, at the request of American, we added an additional 5 lines of flying through the summer schedule. This increased capacity extended through mid-August and combined with the additional C checks, reduced the number of spare aircraft available to the company. As previously mentioned, our C check volume is at a historical high and more than double the company's normalized scheduled C check rates. Our DHL operation continues to perform very well operationally. We've completed our first full year of operations. For DHL, our controllable completion factor was 99.26% for the year, and our on-time performance rate was 97.65%. Both have exceeded DHL's performance goals and our performance. The third 737 aircraft delivery has been postponed by the lessor due to deliveries and conversion, maintenance, and certification. I'd now like to make some additional comments about our outlook on labor. We remain focused on hiring and training to meet increasing staffing requirements in all of our operational divisions. For pilots, this was exacerbated by an increase in early retirements at the majors and has resulted in higher attrition. While we put our training back into full capacity in May, we have seen further elevated attrition levels over the past 60 days. While we have been able to successfully recruit a sufficient number of new hire pilots and currently have over 200 pilots in training, there is a gap between the resignations and when the new hire training is completed. In addition, we removed 5 aircraft that had been added for the summer peak from our American operation, and as a result, for the December quarter, we are currently anticipating a block hour reduction in flying of 8% from the September 2021 quarter. Furthermore, we feel like we are very well-positioned to be an attractive option for regional pilots through opportunities such as our fleet consists entirely of 76-passenger or narrow body 737 aircraft and does not have turboprop or 50-passenger aircraft. We offer the United Aviate program. We're one of few regional airlines able to offer a direct pathway for our pilots to become a career pilot for United Airlines. Our 737 aircraft, we are the only regional airline offering the opportunity to fly larger aircraft and earn the highest pay in the regional industry. We have well-positioned crew domiciles across the country that allow our pilots the opportunity to live where they desire and commute easily to work. We're currently offering captain upgrade opportunities. We are actively recruiting from hundreds of aviation schools across the country. We have competitive new hire pay with enhanced bonus opportunities, and we are pursuing other creative initiatives to attract and retain new pilot candidates. With respect to mechanics, while we are continuing to deal with attrition, we have been able to hire a sufficient number to keep pace with attrition thus far. That being said, we continue to remain highly focused in this critical area. As an example, we implemented a new pay scale effective in October of 2021 and implemented other incentive and retention programs. With that, I'd now like to turn the time over to Torque to walk through our financial performance. Great. Thank you, Brad. Let me do a review of our financial performance and then provide some more detail on our business outlook. After that, I'll discuss our capital outlook and balance sheet. For the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2021, we reported a net loss of $7.5 million or $0.21 per diluted share and an adjusted net loss of $2.1 million or $0.06 per diluted share, excluding the $6.8 million dollar mark-to-market non-cash losses on our investments in equity securities and related impact on our income tax expense. For the full year 2021, we report a net income of $16.6 million or $0.43 per diluted share and an adjusted net income of $24.6 million or $0.64 per diluted share. These adjustments include the aforementioned mark-to-market non-cash losses on investments in equity securities, as well as a loss on a lease termination and a gain on extinguishment of debt. As Brad mentioned, we've been investing in our fleet, getting them through heavy maintenance that has been deferred during COVID-19. Overall, maintenance expense was up $14 million versus prior year. C check volumes were double the normal run rate in the quarter. The associated cost was roughly $9 million higher than Q4 2020. Similarly, our rotable and expendable expenses were elevated due to a catch-up on parts removed in fiscal year 2020 that were not needed at lower flying levels, but are now being repaired and put back into service to support the higher flying activity. This add another $3 million of expense, net of one-time true ups with one of our maintenance vendors. Let me review where we are on cash and liquidity. Cash for the quarter, excluding restricted cash, decreased by $59.9 million to $120.5 million. This amount is slightly above where we forecasted to be last quarter. The reduction from Q3 to Q4 is primarily due to planned scheduled debt payments of $45 billion, which included a one-time deferred debt payment of $19 million, partner true-ups of roughly $23 million, a $5 million investment in Archer Aviation, a $5 million investment in Heart Aerospace during the quarter, and the purchase of a new spare engine. Total debt at the end of the quarter was $670.3 million, which is down $43.4 million from the prior quarter. Assuming no additional debt, the balance will be reduced by roughly $100 million on average in each of fiscal year 2022 and 2023. This brings the total debt balance down to roughly $470 million at fiscal year-end 2023. There was $9 million of CapEx in the quarter, which primarily consisted of the purchase of a new spare engine and rotable spare parts. For fiscal year 2022, we still have 4 additional new spare engine deliveries and no other major planned capital expenditures. Effective October 21, all temporary partner rate reductions related to PSP are no longer in effect as the PSP program ended at the end of September. Let me now touch on guidance. Although the environment is still recovering, we did wanna provide guidance in a few areas. As Brad outlined, our Q1 2022 block hours are anticipated to be 8% lower than the previous quarter. We also anticipate increased pilot training costs as we have our training center at full capacity for new hire training and captain upgrades. Like most regionals, we have enhanced new hire pilot compensation to attract a sufficient number of qualified trainees. Our heavy maintenance expense levels will continue to be elevated for the first two quarters of fiscal year 2022. This includes both an interior refresh program at American, as well as our regularly scheduled heavy maintenance visits. For our pass-through maintenance expense, as you know, this has zero P&L impact and is not related to our level of operations. This is more related to the timing of events, so we've provided our best estimates in our press release. We see 2022 as a transitional year, primarily in the first two quarters. We are coming to the end of the elevated C check activity we've seen in the past year. We see travel demand increasing. Given that pilot hiring at major carriers is expected to be at elevated levels, we are focused on making sure we keep our pilot hiring and recruiting activity at full throttle. Our success in this area will have a direct impact upon our financial performance. Now, I'd like to turn it back over to Jonathan. Thank you very much, Torque. We appreciate the financial recap. To sum up, we strengthen our partnership with United through the addition of 20 aircraft and our partnership in electric aviation. We were also able to successfully enter into a new contract with American in the midst of the pandemic. We believe we have a plan to attract and retain qualified employees. We also feel our DHL Cargo flying and our European growth plans are just the start as we continue to look for and pursue new growth opportunities. Finally, we remain the low-cost regional airline and intend on being the regional airline leader in decarbonization and electric aircraft. While we certainly face some significant near-term issues, we believe that the fundamentals of our industry remain unchanged over the long term. At this point, operator, please open up the call, as I'd be happy to answer any questions that the analysts may have. Thank you so much. If you would like to ask a question at this time, please press star one on your phone, unmute your line, and record your name as it will be needed to introduce you. Again, to ask a question, please press star one. Our first question comes from Savi Syth. Go ahead please, your line is open. Hey, good afternoon, everybody. I'm just a bit confused. If I look at your results relative to your guidance, you know, your. For this quarter, your block hour production came in higher. Your kind of recognition of deferred revenue was higher and some of the non-pass-through engine and C-check maintenance cost estimates were actually lower. What seems to be different maybe is the 5 American aircraft leaving a little sooner and maybe slower, you know, aircraft with GoJet. I'm just kinda curious if, you know, were you expecting a loss, a non-GAAP loss in the September quarter previously? Or, you know, if something else happened during the quarter that drove that. Also, you know, along those lines, if you expect some of these costs to continue for another couple of quarters, should we be expecting non-GAAP losses for a couple more quarters as well? Savi, this is Jonathan. I'm gonna just give you a high-level view from my perspective in terms of what drove this quarter, and I'll let Torque and Mike maybe chime in. Clearly, what drove things here was just the elevated level of heavy maintenance, primarily in C check. The cost, the duration, the number. I think it's important to point out that, you know, we have 64 aircraft on property. We're only flying 42. We had 5 additional aircraft, but in the meantime, we were actually maintaining all of them. You know, I don't imagine that will not continue. We had a lot of aircraft that were in, also, as part of our new agreement with American. We put them through various types of mods, whether it be electric seat mods, interior mods, paint mods. We were funding, you know, an additional. I believe it was 5 lines of aircraft that otherwise would either been available for spares or, you know, been parked, and the expense of maintaining those aircraft would not be there. A lot of this is related to that transition into the new American contract, and again, in the higher costs associated with primarily heavy checks that came through. Again, on those C checks, they were. There were more. They took longer due to supply chain issues, and they were more expensive as a result. Yeah, Jonathan, maybe I can just add, you know, it's not only the C checks, but there was an increase in the quarter related to parts support. Some of it's tied to the C check. You know, when the C checks are in for that expanded period of time, there are, you know, significant parts expenses that we had related to the C checks and the parts related to the interiors, like Jonathan alluded to, we're flying more aircraft than in the CPA, some of them to support for spares, some of them to support for programs that we're doing with the American fleet. So those are the two major items, the heavy maintenance and the parts support related to them. That makes sense. Just on that, you know, the non-GAAP, you know, should we be expecting losses for another couple of quarters here, or is this something that changes here in the next couple of quarters? Well, we're not giving any guidance on earnings, but we, as Torque alluded to, and I think Jonathan did in his, the heavy maintenance, you know, a lot of it was for work that took longer than expected, and that is going to be tailing off in. It'll go through Q1, part of Q2, but then certainly by Q3 and Q4, we'll be through that whole cycle, and we'll probably be under run rate at that point, right? It'll kind of flip to a lower point. Got it. If I might just ask, on the pilot front, could you talk about like, if any color on levels and if this is, you know, what you're seeing a little bit of a transitionary issue, as you mentioned, where, you know, it takes time for the pilots that are in training to catch up? Or do you see this kind of treadmill that you're on, lasting quite a bit longer? I'll make my comment again, and I want Brad to give you more color. You know, during COVID, the attrition literally went to zero. I mean, when I'm talking zero, you know, 6, 8, 10, 12 pilots a month, which for us obviously is, and given the fact that we were flying so much reduced. The fact is we also felt that this was not gonna be long-term. When it turned, it would turn. As we mentioned in the call, we really began back in April, while we still had pilots on voluntary leave. We, you know, fired up the training center and started to move forward. The attrition levels, you know, increased and then increased again. I guess at this point, we're not counting on them coming down. I do think that they could moderate somewhat, but to moderate to what would still be considered elevated levels. We're also talking to our partners about it and how we might work together, as I mentioned too, that we have to work this problem together and just coming up with a solution on how to best handle this, due to the fact that there is in fact that lag that Brad talked about. You know, we need to be able to operate within this new paradigm where the demand for pilots is it appears to be you know just very powerful. It was absolutely exacerbated by the you know early retirements that were offered during the pandemic, which effectively accelerated the impact of the pilot shortage, which you know I think we all know has been artificially created by government regulation regarding the 1,500-hour rule. Brad, you wanna add something on that? Jonathan, I think you covered it. I mean, I don't have really anything meaningful to add. That's the issue. All right. Thank you guys. Our next question comes from Helane Becker. Go ahead, please. Your line is open. Oh, thanks very much, operator. Right at the second my clock goes off. Hi, everybody. Thank you for the time. Just a couple of questions here. To clarify, on the 5 aircraft that were spares that aren't being flown now, did that free up pilots, or did they immediately leave and go to other airlines? Oh, no. The five aircraft were just transitioned out of service. You know, we have had attrition levels that, you know, from best we can tell, and again, this is anecdotal at best, but talking to our partners and talking to other people around the industry, this is not something unique to Mesa by any stretch. You know, at American, for example, our utilization levels, because we did pull the aircraft out, were higher than other carriers. But again, you know, it's the question of how fast can we train versus how many people we lose. Right. You know, it took us a little bit of time to spool up training because it's, you know, it's at least a, you know, roughly 90-day footprint at best. It just takes time to catch up with that lag. But as Brad mentioned, we have over 200 pilots in training, and, you know, we think that we're gonna be able to continue to fulfill our pilot requirements going forward as best we can tell. I mean, the environment is very volatile, and that's for sure. Gotcha. Are there issues with people other than pilots that exist? I know you outsource most of your maintenance, and you already talked about that, but are there other issues? I'll let Brad talk about maintenance. Yeah. Let me just give you an example where when we say that there's Mm-hmm You know, it's amazing. I mean, we have generally fairly high level of attrition within flight attendants. To give you an example, I mean, it is not even remotely close to the kind of numbers that we've seen attrition out in flight attendants, which, you know, thankfully, we can train quickly, and we have thousands of applicants. Just to give you an example, one of our partners hired 22 of our flight attendants in eight days. I mean, their demand levels have exploded. It's just like I said, it's a new regime, and we just have to come to grips with it, and we are in fact acting as fast as we can. You would never think for a second that you'd be dealing with, you know, flight attendant attrition the way it is and, you know, effectively a shortage in flight attendants. You know, yes, it affects everybody, and I want Brad to talk about the next, you know, obviously critical is, you know, highly trained mechanics. I mean, if you want, if you wanna make a comment. Yeah. I mean, look, Helane, I don't think it's any surprise there is pressure on all labor groups. Mechanics are no exception. The actual numbers, though, we've been able to hire a sufficient number of mechanics to keep pace with attrition. With mechanics, you know, although you're getting an inexperienced mechanic, the training footprint is just not nearly as long as it is with a pilot. Right. Although there is pressure, we've been keeping up on hiring with the other groups. The pilots obviously get more focus and attention because of the demand issues or the supply issues and the length of the training footprint. Gotcha. That's very helpful. Thanks, Brad. Just if I can follow up, does the management change at American change anything for you with the American contract? No. I mean, nothing, certainly nothing contractually. You know, I mean, look, you know, Doug and I have been friends since the America West bankruptcy, and certainly we're sorry to see him go, you know, to retire because he's always been a friend and an ally. We've also known Robert Isom for a long time. Brad has worked very closely with their operational people, Devon May. You know, so for the folks that we deal with, I don't see any significant change. You know, we like Doug a lot, both professionally and personally, and wish him the best. I mean, it. You know, you know, I don't think we'll be hurt by it. I think that the impact will be just. You know, it'll be the same. Contractually, there's no change. You want to add anything, Brad? Gotcha. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Just a reminder that you may still press star one and record your name to ask a question. Our next question comes from Mike Linenberg. Go ahead please. Your line is open. Good afternoon, everyone. Hey, Jonathan, the European operation, the 49%, so I guess you're gonna account for that under the equity method. When does that start showing up in the P&L? Like, what's the ramp-up there? I guess there's startup costs maybe, and I don't know if there's some initial CapEx. Can you talk about that? Because that felt like that was gonna be a fiscal year 2022 development. Well, I'm gonna ask Mike to answer that because he has been responsible and taking the lead on the European operation. I'm gonna ask Mike to answer those questions. Great. Hi, Mike. Yeah, this is Mike Lotz. We're working with the Maltese regulatory authorities, where we're going to have the certificate and be incorporated. We're going through the process of getting a certificate. We expect to get that certificate certainly in Q2, in the first half of calendar 2022. The start-up costs will be minimal. You know, we're talking not millions of dollars, you know, probably more like hundreds of thousands of dollars to start up. You know, we'll be looking for customers in the coming months and go from there. With respect to staffing and bringing in pilots and the like, is this operation gonna run into some of the same issues that we're seeing in the U.S.? I know this pilot and mechanic shortage seems to be global. Like, anything on that front that you're seeing or that you can highlight for us? Thanks. Yeah. First of all, I wanna mention that when Mike said we're looking for customers, I think that's important because we intend. Our thought there and our partner's thoughts is that we're gonna bring over to Europe much more of a kind of U.S. model capacity purchase agreement. We've already begun conversations with, you know, large carriers to provide that level of service. As you know, the regional business has been truly decimated in Europe. In terms of personnel, I mean, you know, I know I am probably one of the few people in here who keep harping on the 1,500-hour rule because everyone else feels it's a lost cause, but I just don't see the same issues internationally that you do in the United States because no other country in the world has adopted these rules. You know, we've looked at some situations in other parts of the world as well, and when we talk about pilot shortage, they look at us and say, "You know, what shortage?" You know, I think that we feel comfortable that with the type of aircraft that we operate there, and it'll likely be a regional jet, we don't think that will be a problem. We feel that we can hire people and retain and attract people without anywhere near the level of difficulty that we have here. You know, it's kind of crazy to think of Europe being less regulated in some respects than the United States, but at least when it comes to pilots, that's the case. Okay. Jonathan or Mike or Brad, can I just sneak in one last one? You talked about the, you know, the attrition rate being high. Did you throw out a number, what%, what you're seeing right now, whether it's pilots or flight attendants? Anything on that front would be great. Thanks, and thanks for taking my question. Yeah. I mean, the pilot numbers are sort of all over the board, although I will tell you they have been increasing since. You know, I can't say what it'd be, you know, unfair to say exiting COVID, but as COVID had begun to sort of wind down, the numbers went up, and it's all been driven by hiring at the major levels. Mm-hmm. You know, I think that that's really what's driven it. You know, we have in the past, under high, you know, high levels of attrition, you know, we've seen numbers in, you know, the 25-30 range, and occasionally it's popped up a little bit higher than that. Mm-hmm. In terms of total pilots. Again, it's just a question of where do things level off and what happens. You know, it's run higher in a couple months, it's run lower. You know, it's really hard to say right now because it's gonna be dependent upon where things shake out. The other thing too is, you know, I do believe that our partners realize that this is a problem for all of us. There's attrition going on throughout the industry. No one is immune. Mm-hmm. No one is immune. A lot of regionals like ourselves have had to fly lower hours. I actually—I'm not aware of any regional that's flying at the levels that we were back in 2019 according to our partners. We may be the closest at American, but you know, I think the fact of the matter. To be fair, that's only because we pulled those aircraft out, you know? I mean, we're not—there's nothing magical there. I think it's really a question of how effective we are at not just you know, retaining pilots, but also attracting people. You know, as one of the drums that we have been beating with our partners is we really need to focus on ways not just to keep people within the United ecosystem or the American ecosystem, but actually to bring people and, you know, sort of refill the reservoir of pilots that in fact is being drained with expansion of flying as well as the, you know, all the retirements that are occurring. Thanks. Thanks, Jonathan. Thanks, everyone. We have another question from Savi Syth. Go ahead, please. Your line is open. Hey, thanks. I was just kind of curious on the cargo front. It sounds like you're, you know, you're executing well there, getting another—it looks on the fleet plan, you're getting that third aircraft as well. Just any update on, you know, how you can expand that or what we can expect, you know, in the next year or two? Sure. You know, clearly we did not enter the cargo business for three aircraft. I mean, you know, it's just not an efficient operation. It's just not an efficient operation. You know, there's lots of reasons why it needs to be bigger. You know, in fact, one of the reasons why we got the third aircraft was just because we were nervous about only having two aircraft and not having a spare. Operationally, we found that we did operate with only two airplanes, and we exceeded. I can tell you without a doubt that we exceeded DHL's expectations over the year. I think that we are very well positioned for growth. You know, the DHLs of the world, Amazon, they don't add growth willy-nilly. They're very thoughtful. I think in our conversations with DHL, they are well aware that and are supportive of the fact that for us to be successful long term, and they have clearly indicated that they want us in the portfolio, that they've made clear without a doubt, that we have to be larger. You know, can we go to 6 airplanes, 8 airplanes, 10 airplanes? You know, I would say that it's probably a fair statement that if we're below 8-10 airplanes, it's hard for us to, you know, really spread our costs around. I think that, you know, the target for us would be to be at least at that number, you know, over the next few years. It won't happen fast. We've made a big investment so far, which clearly has impacted our numbers as well. They have made it very clear that they would like to see us remain in the portfolio, and they're gonna help us do that. Perfect. Thank you. Speakers, I am showing no further questions at this time. All right. In conclusion, you know, I just wanna say finally, it has been a tough quarter for us. You know, my first statement about who would have thought it would be harder to exit COVID than to enter COVID, the rapidity at which demand levels, at least domestically, increased and the fact the majors were anxious to put so much additional capacity, it's not as if it caught us by surprise. It's just that even starting training back in April, while we still had pilots on VLOA, it's just taken time as, you know, to get back up to the speed that we want, we would like to be at. The situation has been difficult. You know, we've frankly said that attrition levels have still not come down. They are still high, and we are gonna continue to work as best we can to make sure that we can provide as many block hours as possible. You know, I think that we feel that we've got these issues to deal with over the near term, but as I mentioned, also, we do feel that not only the fundamentals of the industry are intact long term, but we think we've laid a good base here at Mesa, and we'll see that benefit over the long term as well. So with that, we appreciate your time. We will continue to work hard to do the best we can. If you have any additional questions, as always, feel free to call any of us, you know, after the call or this week whenever you need to get any additional information. Thank you very much. That will conclude today's conference, and we thank you for participating. You may disconnect at this time.