Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from William Greene - Morgan Stanley.
William Greene – Morgan Stanley
Larry, can I ask you just to outline a little bit what options you have with the ExpressJet? I guess the best case would be they give you the economics you want, but I don’t know sort of what outcomes we’ve got here and what it could mean for capacity.
Larry Kellner
Well, Bill, I think there’s two things. One, we’d like to improve our overall cost structure on our regional capacity. Two, we’re pretty flexible about how we do that, so I don’t want to get into a detailed discussion. I’d like to kind of keep that for something Continental’s working on. I will tell you, ExpressJet continues to do an excellent job for us operationally. It’s simple a cost issue. As fuel prices go up, we feel more pressure on that front.
William Greene – Morgan Stanley
Yes, so I guess that’s what I was kind of getting at. It seems to me that the flexibility in the contract that it affords you, gives you an opportunity of reduced regional flying which I would think would be a good thing in this fuel environment. Is that wrong?
Larry Kellner
Well as I said in my remarks, we’ll continue to look at regional capacity clearly at these fuel prices. We probably need a little less of it, not a little more of it.
William Greene – Morgan Stanley
Then when you think about the M&A side, have you had discussions with your labor groups, and what is their reaction to this?
Larry Kellner
Well, Bill, we’re always pretty inclusive in our discussions. Again, I’m not going to get into the details of things we’re not ready to talk about yet. But just know that we’re not going to change our culture here. We’re going to continue to be very coworker focused and make sure that they’re informed once we’ve made a decision of kind of what we’re doing; or as we work through processes, we’ll clearly work with the appropriate (inaudible).
William Greene – Morgan Stanley
All right, maybe just one detailed question last. Just one the international RASM, how much of the growth came form currency and fuel surcharge?
Jim Compton
Bill, this is Jim. On the Trans-Atlantic side, we’ve recorded 2.8% RASM growth, but 2.5 of those points were related to currency, and on the Pacific side about 3.5 points.
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