Late Monday Northwest Airlines released its first quarter earnings report.

The airline posted a loss of $292 million, or $3.34 a share. Adjusting for pesky bankruptcy-related charges, the airline would have posted a profit of $100 million.

Last year the airline posted a loss of $1.1 billion, bloated by bankruptcy-related charges. But minus those charges, the airline still lost $129 million in the first quarter of 2006. So the airline posted about a $200 million positive flip year-over-year.

Revenue for the quarter dipped slightly to $2.87 billion, down from $2.89 billion a year ago. But operating expenses dropped more — 8%. First-quarter fuel prices slid 5.4 percent, and labor costs dropped 9%.  Northwest’s payments to regional carriers dropped 42% as it renegotiated its agreement with Pinnacle Airlines and bought out bankrupt Mesaba.

While domestic passenger revenue rose just 3.4% to $1.42 billion, the airline saw strong revenue growth on its overseas flights. Passenger revenue over the Pacific rose 12% to $515 million, and revenue over the Atlantic rose 24% to $272 million.

I would also note that generally speaking, the airline’s revenue performance was  much better than the one posted last week by United Airlines.



Passenger revenue rose 7.5% from a year ago, to $2.2 billion.

According to CFO Neal Cohen,  this marks the first time Northwest has turned a first-quarter profit since 1998, not counting unusual items.

Northwest ended the quarter with about $2.4 billion in cash, plus another $543 million in restricted cash.

All in all, not a bad set of numbers from the about-to-emerge airline.