American Airlines was able to quickly recover from several disruptive events during the third quarter to report marginally higher revenue and capacity across both its domestic and international networks.
Revenue at the Fort Worth-based airline rose 1.2% to $13.7 billion, as expenses came in at $13.6 billion, down 1.1% from the same period in 2023. Fuel costs fell by more than 10% while salaries, wages and benefits as well as maintenance and regional expenses rose, the company said on 24 October.
The airline reported a loss of $149 million, however. But that is less than one-third of the loss it reported during the same quarter a year ago. Excluding net special items, the carrier said it had a profit of $205 million. Those special items include taxes relating to charges resulting from the ratification of a new collective bargaining agreement with flight attendants.
“The American Airlines team continues to focus on running a reliable operation and managing costs across the airline,” chief executive Robert Isom says. “We have taken aggressive action to reset our sales and distribution strategy and re-engage the business travel community, which we’re confident will improve our revenue performance over time.
“We have heard great feedback from travel agencies and corporate customers as we work to rebuild the foundation of our commercial strategy and make it easy for customers to do business with American,” he adds.
American acknowledged that it needed to change its strategy in late May, when it lowered its earnings outlook for the second quarter and disclosed the departure of former chief commercial officer Vasu Raja.
Operationally, the company says it quickly recovered from several events including the CrowdStrike technology outage in July, and Hurricanes Debby and Helene.
“Despite the impact of these events, the American team delivered strong operational results in the third quarter, including the highest completion factor among US network carriers and delivering the airline’s highest third-quarter load factor since the merger of American and US Airways in 2013,” American says.
Load factor on American’s international network was 87.4%, up 2.7 percentage points, while domestic load factor rose 2.5 percentage points to 86.1%.
The airline had 971 aircraft in its mainline fleet at the end of September, up from 950 a year earlier.
On 23 October the US Department of Transportation saddled the company with a $50 million fine for violating the rights of disabled passengers over a five-year period between 2019 and 2023.
American Airlines will hold a webcast to discuss its third-quarter results later in the day.
