Alaska Air Group Reports First Quarter Profit

Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air, subsidiaries of Alaska Air Group (NYSE: ALK), together serve more than 90 cities through an expansive network in Alaska, the Lower 48, Hawaii, Canada and Mexico. Alaska Airlines ranked "Highest in Customer Satisfaction Among Traditional Network Carriers" in the J.D. Power and Associates 2008 and 2009 North America Airline Satisfaction Studies(SM). For reservations, visit alaskaair.com. For more news and information, visit the Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air Newsroom at alaskaair.com/newsroom.

Glossary of Financial Terms

ASM - Available seat miles or "capacity." Represents total seats available across the fleet multiplied by the number of miles flown.

RPM - Revenue passenger miles or "traffic." The number of those available seats that were filled with paying passengers. One passenger traveling one mile is one RPM.

RASM - Total operating revenue divided by ASMs. Operating revenue includes all passenger revenue, freight and mail, Mileage Plan and other ancillary revenue -- commonly called "unit revenue" and represents the average total revenue for flying one seat one mile.

PRASM - Passenger revenue per ASM -- commonly called "passenger unit revenue."

Yield - Passenger revenue per RPM. This represents the average revenue for flying one passenger one mile.

CASM - Total operating costs per ASM. This represents all operating expenses, including fuel and special items -- commonly called "unit cost."

CASMex - Operating costs excluding fuel and special items per ASM. This metric is used to help track progress toward reduction of non-fuel operating costs, since fuel costs are largely out the company's control.

Economic fuel - Best estimate of the cash cost of fuel, net of the impact of the company's fuel-hedging program.

Mainline - Represents flying on Alaska jets and all associated revenue and costs.

Purchased capacity flying - Represents operations whereby Horizon and, to a much lesser extent, another small carrier in the state of Alaska fly certain routes for Alaska using Horizon's or the other carrier's fleets.

SOURCE Alaska Air Group, Inc.