Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Duane Pfennigwerth – Raymond James.
Duane Pfennigwerth – Raymond James
Just in regards to your updated guidance, can you talk specifically about what led you to reduce your block hour expectations for the first quarter in '09?
Bryan Bedford
What we do is use the website to try to give our friends in the analyst community the best insight that we have as we're getting it from our mainline partners. We've certainly seen utilization come down. I think you see that in the stats just a little over nine hours a day down from a little over ten hours a day historically. So we are seeing utilization pressure in the first quarter.
We expect that pressure is going to continue into the second quarter plus we're taking out quite a few aircraft this year. We're taking the 15 airplanes out of the Continental relationship. We're only taking delivery of three 175s for Delta. We're also going to take out two 140s for American in June.
So, again, you're seeing a fairly noticeable drop in the small jet composition of our fleet and our flying and you're getting the full year effect of the growth that we added in 2008, which mutes the block hour and capacity reductions.
Duane Pfennigwerth – Raymond James
Can you just qualitatively talk about Midwest, how that operation is performing and if you're seeing payment terms that are acceptable to you from Midwest?
Bryan Bedford
Well, clearly, the payment terms are much less favorable than what we had with Frontier, which is one of the reasons that gave cause to a $215 million claim being filed against the estate of Frontier Airlines.
As far as Midwest performance, they do continue to perform. We're probably a little more intimate with their restructuring plans than what we might be with other partners. I can tell you they are having terrific success in the restructuring process and we believe Midwest is going to continue to be beyond the aviation landscape for years to come.
Duane Pfennigwerth – Raymond James
Thanks and then just lastly, are there any other investments that you foresee with the current set of partners that you have here in 2009?
Bryan Bedford
Well, it's hard to talk about, Duane. We obviously have one follow up loan available to US Airways. It’s our expectation that they'll take that loan down provided they are in compliance with the loan agreement, which we suspect they will be. And so that's a $25 million follow on commitment set to take down on March 31st of this year.
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