Mirroring problems ravaging the entire airline industry, US Airways yesterday said it continues to bleed money, losing $191 million in the first quarter amid record-high fuel prices and super-cheap fares.

	Online Graphic See a graphic that shows first-quarter performance for major U.S. airlines.

The nation's seventh-largest carrier and the dominant airline at Pittsburgh International Airport did say it flew more people than it did a year ago and paid its employees a lot less -- its labor costs were 25 percent lower than a year ago.

But those favorable trends were not enough to offset a 58 percent jump in fuel costs to $368 million or lower ticket prices that caused revenue to drop 4 percent despite the higher traffic.

Overall, its first-quarter loss widened 8 percent from $177 million a year ago. "We continue to operate under extremely challenging conditions," Chief Executive Officer Bruce Lakefield said.

While the airline has tried to raise fares slightly, matching increases at other carriers, oil continues to hover near $50 per barrel and the costs of fuel "cannot be fully recovered through traffic growth and incremental fare increases," Lakefield said.

The only big U.S. carriers to make money during the first quarter were Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways and America West Airlines, the Tempe, Ariz.-based company involved in merger talks with US Airways.

Of the group, Southwest posted the best results, earning $76 million, largely because the Dallas-based discounter locked in low fuel prices by paying for contracts in advance.

Southwest, which begins service from Pittsburgh Wednesday, claims its oil strategy saved the company $155 million and allowed it to buy 86 percent of its fuel at $26 a barrel -- about half of what oil sold for during the first quarter.

Buying fuel in advance takes lots of cash up front, a luxury many unprofitable carriers can not afford. And no carrier, even Southwest, figured that oil would stay this high for this long.

Many now are scrambling to deal with the damage.

American Airlines, the largest domestic carrier, has drastically reduced its costs in recent years and made its operation more efficient.

But it still lost $162 million during the first quarter and expects fuel costs to be $1.3 billion higher this year.

Even though it also has cut costs, No. 3 carrier Delta Air Lines lost more than $1 billion during the quarter.

It said fuel costs were up $294 million and that it may sell some regional airline subsidiaries to raise cash.

Northwest Airlines, which lost $450 million in the year's first three months, is asking employees for more than $1 billion in new concessions.

US Airways, struggling through its second bankruptcy in two years, already has been through three painful round of employee cuts, the most recent being a $1.1 billion package of savings wrested from unions last fall.

Employees agreed to cuts in pay, benefits, pensions and health care, and to allow more outsourcing of work.

The reductions helped lower the airline's cost of flying one seat one mile -- excluding fuel -- to 8.46 cents in the first quarter, down more than 15 percent from 10.02 cents a year ago.

Personnel costs, its largest expense, were down 25 percent to $477 million.

Despite the progress, US Airways remains one of the highest-cost operators in the industry.

Southwest's cost of flying one seat one mile, for example, was 6.32 cents, excluding fuel, in the quarter.

And even if fuel costs hadn't risen, US Airways still would have lost $56 million.

Looking ahead, the second quarter is typically better than the first, with more people traveling during warmer weather, so US Airways can expect to see traffic increase.

Passengers also can expect to pay higher ticket prices. "Either the price of oil has to come down or fares have to go up," JetBlue Chief Executive Officer David Neeleman said last week at an industry conference in Phoenix.

US Airways still hopes to get out of bankruptcy this summer and continues to pursue a merger with America West, which earned $33 million in the first quarter.

But US Airways still needs to find more investment cash to make the deal happen.

A plan of bankruptcy reorganization was due to be filed today, according to a deadline set by aircraft creditor General Electric, but a US Airways spokesman said yesterday that "the timing" of a filing was still being discussed with GE, which has agreed to other deadline extensions in recent months.

Some in the industry predict that consolidation will solve many problems.

But others think mergers present tricky labor integration issues and believe it would help the industry more if a large ailing carrier such as US Airways were to go out of business and liquidate, freeing up capacity in an industry that has lost more than $30 billion since 2001.