Mesaba Airlines

Mesaba flew as Northwest Airlink from Minneapolis-St. Paul. Delta sold it to Pinnacle in 2010 for $62 million, and its aircraft and employees moved to Pinnacle in January 2012. Its record here ends in 2011.

A twin turboprop airliner in silhouette against the setting sun — Illustrative photo, not an aircraft of Mesaba Airlines.

5.7 millionpassengers, 2011
58seats per flight on average
561 milesaverage trip per passenger
47.2seat-miles per gallon

How it changed

Mesaba Airlines carried 5.7 million passengers in 2011. Its busiest year was 2009, at 6.8 million.

Its average flight had 43 seats in 2000 and 58 in 2011, a sign of larger aircraft replacing smaller ones. The average passenger flew 265 miles per segment in 2000 and 561 in 2011, and 77% of its seat-miles were filled in 2011.

Mesaba Airlines passengers per year, 2000 to 2011.

Who it flew for

Share of Mesaba Airlines seat-miles estimated to belong to each airline, by year. The split comes from the airports it serves, so read it as an estimate. Years with no figures are those where the flying was too small to estimate or the airline sold its own seats.

Estimated partner shares

Year	Northwest Airlines	Delta Air Lines
2011		100.0%
2010		100.0%
2009	96.1%	3.9%
2008	100.0%
2007	100.0%
2006	100.0%
2005	100.0%
2004	100.0%
2003	100.0%
2002	100.0%
2001	100.0%
2000	99.9%

Fuel

In 2011 Mesaba Airlines burned 88 million gallons of jet fuel, which is 47.2 seat-miles per gallon and about 0.267 kg of CO2 per passenger-mile. Over 500 miles that's roughly 134 kg per passenger. Small regional aircraft burn more fuel per seat than the mainline jets, and a short hop spends a larger share of its fuel on take-off and climb, so these figures aren't graded against the airlines on the main list. Their flying and fuel are counted in the airlines whose names are on the tickets.

For some years Mesaba Airlines didn't file usable fuel figures with BTS. In 2 of them we priced its own flight hours at the fuel burn per hour that other airlines reported for the same aircraft types that year. They're marked with an asterisk in the table below. See the methodology.

Year-by-year figures

Year	Passengers (millions)	Departures (thousands)	Seats per flight	Average trip (miles)	Load factor	Seat-miles (billions)	Seat-miles per gallon
2011	5.7	135	58.4	561	77.4%	4.15	47.2
2010	6.2	158	54.8	571	77.3%	4.61	48.9
2009	6.8	200	51.1	485	74.8%	4.42	47.7
2008	5.4	181	46.5	409	71.4%	3.09	47.4
2007	2.7	124	36.3	250	63.7%	1.06	44.7
2006	3.9	150	40.9	296	67.6%	1.70	67.4
2005	5.8	207	44.7	338	66.4%	2.96	34.1*
2004	5.6	205	44.5	343	64.0%	2.98	34.5*
2003	5.9	225	44.9	303	60.0%	2.96	42.2
2002	5.8	233	44.8	278	57.0%	2.82	37.0
2001	6.2	252	44.6	262	56.5%	2.86	33.8
2000	6.4	271	43.1	265	57.3%	2.95	34.1

Regionals with shared partners

These profiles have a partner airline in common with Mesaba Airlines in at least one data year. The partner split is estimated, and the airlines may have flown for the shared network at different times.

Nearby in fuel efficiency

Neighbours in the seat-miles per gallon table, using each airline's last data year. Fuel estimates are marked on the profiles, and these aren't same-year rankings.

Executive Airlines46.1 seat-miles per gallon, 2012 Mesa Airlines47.2 seat-miles per gallon, 2025 Compass Airlines48.4 seat-miles per gallon, 2020 Colgan Air52.1 seat-miles per gallon, 2012

Airline references

Wikipedia: Mesaba Airlines

Source: US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), T-100 traffic and Schedule T-2 fuel filings; US EPA jet-fuel CO2 factor. Methods and allocation limits.

Back to all regional airlines or the fuel rankings.