American Airlines reports decline in October traffic

Fort Worth-based American Airlines Inc. said Nov. 4 its October traffic fell 2.6 percent to 10.2 billion revenue passenger miles from 10.5 billion revenue passenger miles a year earlier.

A revenue passenger mile, the industry measure for passenger volume, is equal to one passenger flown one mile.

During the month, the airline boarded 7.12 million passengers, down from 7.43 million in October 2008.

The nation’s second largest carrier reduced capacity by operating fewer flights and using smaller planes on some routes. The result was a drop in load factor – or the percentage of available seats filled with flyers – to 7.3 percent, with 12.33 billion available seat miles from 13.3 billion a year ago.

The average load factor improved to 83.1 percent from 79 percent a year earlier, or a gain of 4.1 percentage points.

For the first 10 months of 2009, American said traffic decreased 8.2 percent and capacity declined 7.8 percent.

Meanwhile, American’s regional affiliate, American Eagle, reported an increase in both its load factor and traffic during October.

American Eagle’s traffic rose 6 percent to 680 million revenue passenger miles, while capacity grew 0.7 percent to 927 million available seat miles.

Eagle’s average plane was 73.3 percent full, compared with 69.7 percent full last October.

American Eagle boarded 1.68 million passengers, up from 1.57 million in 2008.

American Airlines and sister carrier American Eagle are units of AMR Corp.

bdillard@bizpress.net