Strong corporate travel demand helped propel American Airlines to record third-quarter revenue this year, though higher fuel prices ate up those gains.
Passenger revenue rose 4.5 percent year over year to $10.6 billion, and total revenue increased 5.4 percent to $11.6 billion, a record for the quarter. Corporate revenue growth outpaced that overall growth on "improved ticket values," American Airlines president Robert Isom said. The carrier's sales team added 450 new corporate accounts during the quarter and has a "healthy pipeline" of accounts in waiting.
Fuel costs increased 42.3 percent to $2.2 billion, which offset those increases. As such, net income for the quarter was $341 million, down by about half from the year prior.
Chairman and CEO Doug Parker said the carrier is responding to higher fuel costs with "lower planned capacity growth, the cancellation of unprofitable flying, deferral of new aircraft deliveries and continued aggressive cost management."
In the third quarter, total domestic capacity rose 2.2 percent year over year as traffic increased 2.1 percent, keeping load factor flat at 83.6 percent. International capacity rose 3.7 percent as demand increased 2.7 percent, and load factor decreased 0.8 percentage points to 80.4 percent. Domestic yield rose 1.5 percent, and international yield increased 4.1 percent.
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