Mesa Air Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: MESA) (“Mesa” or the “Company”) today provided an update that the Company has completed the sales of six of the 15 surplus CRJ-900 airframes, and ten of the 30 surplus CRJ engines, associated with its Regional Aircraft Securitization Program (“RASPRO”) finance lease. Mesa previously entered into agreements to sell the 15 airframes and 30 engines, respectively, to two separate third parties.
Previously, the RASPRO finance lease carried a $50.4 million obligation for Mesa to purchase the assets at the end of the lease in March 2024. As disclosed with its first quarter fiscal 2024 earnings release, Mesa reached an agreement to fulfill the purchase obligation over the course of May 2024 to September 2024. Based on the aforementioned sale closings and resulting payments to RASPRO, Mesa's purchase obligation has been reduced to $27.3 million as of May 31, 2024. The Company anticipates fully eliminating this obligation in the coming months as it purchases the remaining assets from RASPRO and in turn executes their sales to the respective third parties under agreement.
“Addressing the RASPRO lease has been one of the top priorities for our surplus asset sale efforts over the past year-and-a-half,” said Jonathan Ornstein, Mesa Chairman and CEO. “This is a significant financial obligation that we are putting behind us, and we are increasingly able to prioritize the future of the company for our investors and people. We look forward to enhancing our focus on returning to profitable performance and executing other strategic actions while closing the remaining transactions related to the RASPRO assets in the coming months.”