Despite a rough winter in the US Northeast and glitches related to last month's reservation system migration, US Airways Group still expects to report a first-quarter profit.

"From an operational standpoint, we are happy to have the first quarter of 2007 behind us," President Scott Kirby said.

"Ice storms in both February and March created problems at US's Philadelphia hub, which, combined with complications that arose while merging the res systems of the old US and America West Airlines, negatively impacted revenue, passenger RASM and unit costs," he said.

"However, our March year-over-year consolidated PRASM was up over the same period last year. Despite the disruption, we still project a slight profit excluding special items for the first quarter." The company reported a US$64 million profit in the first quarter of 2006.

For the first quarter ended March 31, US expects to report a 1%-3% year-over-year increase in mainline nonfuel CASM and a 10%-12% rise in US Airways Express nonfuel CASM. Full-year guidance still includes a decline in mainline nonfuel unit costs of up to 1%. It is expected to rise 4%-5% on regional operations.

The group flew 4.71 billion consolidated RPMs in March, up 0.5% on the year-ago month. Capacity fell 1.5% to 5.68 billion ASMs and load factor rose 1 point to 82%.