Cowabunga.

Yet another big day for airline earnings today. One thing is for sure. This quarter has been one of the heavily “front-loaded” variety, with a big onslaught of results all within the first 2 weeks.

Tomorrow Frontier will join the crowd, while Northwest will join the earnings parade next Monday.

For PlaneBusiness Banter subscribers, look for in-depth coverage of US Airways, Republic, United, ExpressJet, and JetBlue in this week’s issue, which will be posted tomorrow. We’ll tackle Alaska and Midwest with the group next week. But as always, subscribers can access our PlaneBusiness Earnings Summaries for all airlines on a current basis.

As for now — let’s take a quick look at the results from today. Then I am off to work on those in-depth earnings call reports for this week’s issue of PBB.

First up is US Airways. The airline reported earnings of $177 million or 1.87. Excluding special items, the airline posted net income of $185 million or $1.96. Both of these compared favorably to last year, when the airline reported a net loss of $78 million or $0.88. Excluding items, the airline posted a profit of $101 million or $1.09.

The $1.96 profit results came in easily above the analyst consensus forecast figure of $1.77 profit for the quarter.

For Midwest, the news was not nearly as good, as the airline posted a loss for the quarter.

The airline posted a net loss for the third quarter of $3.9 million, or $0.15, compared with net income of $1.7 million, or $0.09 cents per share, for the same period the year before.

The most glaring tidbit that caught our eye here? The airline’s operating expenses were up a whopping 24%.

For the nine months ending Sept. 30, the airline has only managed to post a profit of $9 million, or $0.35 cents per share, compared with net income of $1.8 million, or $0.09 cents per share, for the same period a year ago. Meanwhile, operating revenue increased almost 14% to $562.9 million from $496.2 million.

Finally, there is Alaska Air Group. The airline said today that it posted net profit of $82.8 million, or $2.11, up from $77.9 million, or $1.93 a share in the same period last year.

Earnings were adjusted to include mark-to-market fuel hedge accounting.

In last year’s third-quarter, the company recorded a loss of $17.4 million, or $0.44 cents a share, as a result of charges related to the buyout of five MD-80 leases and a voluntary severance program in connection with a new labor contract.

Total operating revenue for the quarter rose to $995.1 million from $935.7 million last year and operating revenue per available seat mile (ASM) increased 1.5% while operating costs per ASM, excluding fuel and special items, decreased 1.1% from last year.

Third-quarter results topped the mean estimates of analysts polled by Thomson Financial for earnings of $1.92 a share and revenue of $988 million.

Nice quarter for the folks up in Seattle.

Tickers: (NYSE:ALK), (NYSE:LCC), (AMEX:MEH)

Technorati Tags: airline earnings, airlines, Alaska Airlines, Midwest Airlines, US Airways