US Airways 2007 Annual Report Download - page 8

Table of Contents
operating revenue in US Airways Group's and US Airways' principal geographic areas, see Notes 15 and 12 to their respective financial
statements included in Items 8A and 8B of this Form 10-K.
Material Services Company and Airways Assurance Limited operate in support of our airline subsidiaries in areas such as the
procurement of aviation fuel and insurance.
Available Information
You may read and copy any materials US Airways Group or US Airways files with the Securities and Exchange Commission
("SEC") at the SEC's Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, NE, Washington, DC 20549. You may obtain information on the operation
of the Public Reference Room by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330. A copy of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, as well as other
Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports are
accessible free of charge at www.usairways.com and at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov as soon as reasonably possible after the report
is filed with or furnished to the SEC.
Airline Industry
A number of structural changes in the industry have taken shape over the past three years, including restructuring through the
Chapter 11 process by four legacy carriers, including US Airways. While domestic capacity continues to rationalize through fleet
reductions and the redeployment of aircraft to international markets, whether demand can remain at historically high levels in the face of
rising fares is unclear.
Despite rising fuel costs throughout the year, the airline industry reported an annual profit in 2007, excluding special items and
bankruptcy-related costs. While fares have increased over the prior year absorbing some of the fuel cost increase, they still remain at
historically low levels on an inflation-adjusted basis.
As we begin 2008, the airline industry appears to be headed for another challenging period due to extremely high oil prices and a
potential economic slowdown. Current fuel prices remain high by historical standards and significant increases in fuel price can
materially and adversely affect operating costs within the industry. A softening economy also makes realizing increases in yield within
the industry difficult.
Airline Operations
We operate a hub-and-spoke network with major hubs in Charlotte, Philadelphia and Phoenix and secondary hubs/focus cities in
Las Vegas, New York, Washington, D.C. and Boston.
In 2007, we were able to increase service in certain markets. We added new transatlantic service from Philadelphia to Athens,
Greece; Brussels, Belgium; and Zurich, Switzerland. Beginning in March 2008, we will start new service to London's Heathrow Airport
from Philadelphia. Finally, in 2007, we received approval for the right to fly to Beijing, China from our Philadelphia hub.
We continued to enhance our fleet in 2007. We took delivery of nine Embraer 190 aircraft during 2007 and expect to take delivery
of the remaining 14 Embraer 190 aircraft in 2008 under our Amended and Restated Purchase Agreement with Embraer. We announced
an agreement with Airbus S.A.S for the firm order of 60 A320 family aircraft, in addition to the 37 aircraft from the previous A319/A320
Purchase Agreement, which we plan to use to replace older Boeing 737 aircraft in the airline's fleet. In addition, as part of that same
order, we announced plans to add 32 widebody aircraft, which includes ten Airbus A330-200 aircraft and 22 Airbus A350 Xtra Wide
Body ("XWB") aircraft. We expect to use these aircraft for both replacements of older widebody aircraft in the fleet and to facilitate
international growth. We are scheduled to begin taking delivery of the A320 family and A330 family of aircraft beginning in 2009 and
the A350-XWB family of aircraft in 2014. Finally, we subsequently modified our agreement with Airbus to add five additional A330-200
aircraft to our existing order, and also agreed to terms with an aircraft lessor to lease two more A330-200 aircraft, bringing the total
number of widebody aircraft we are set to take delivery of to 39.
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