American Airlines Post $13.6 Billion Revenue in Third Quarter

Despite a record third quarter revenue of $13.6 billion, an increase of 1.2% y-o-y, the American Airlines Group on Thursday said that it has incurred a net loss of $149 million, compared to $545 million, during the same period last year.

The results indicate the ongoing efforts to strengthen the airline’s financial position and enhance its sales and distribution strategies, American Airlines said while announcing the Q3-2024 financial results.

American is the largest airline in the world when measured by scheduled passengers carried, revenue passenger mile, and daily flights. Together with its regional partners and affiliates, it operates an extensive international and domestic network with almost 6,800 flights per day to nearly 350 destinations in 48 countries

The Group has led the US network carriers in third-quarter completion factor and ended the third quarter with $11.8 billion of total available liquidity. The company was on track to reduce total debt from peak levels by $15 billion by year-end 2025.

American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said that the Group continued to focus on running a reliable operation and managing costs across the airline.

“We have taken aggressive action to reset our sales and distribution strategy and reengage the business travel community, which we are 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 said.

Sales and Distribution Strategy

American Airlines renegotiated competitive contracts with a majority of the largest travel agencies and many of its top corporate customers, reintroduced corporate experience benefits for corporate travellers, and increased support for corporate and agency customers by adding sales account managers and sales support staff.

The American Airlines also demonstrated its continued resilience in Q3 by quickly recovering from several irregular operations events, most notably the Crowd Strike outage 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 the US network carriers and delivering the airline’s highest third-quarter load factor since the merger of American and US Airways in 2013.

Financial Performance

American delivered earnings results ahead of prior guidance. On a Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), the company produced an operating margin of 0.7% in the quarter. Excluding the impact of net special items, the company produced an adjusted operating margin of 4.7% in the quarter.

It has also continued to strengthen its balance sheet in the third quarter by reducing total debt by approximately $360 million and is more than $13 billion toward its goal of reducing total debt by $15 billion by the end of 2025.

The company ended the quarter with approximately $11.8 billion of total available liquidity, comprised of cash and short-term investments plus undrawn capacity under revolving credit and other facilities.

Investor Update         

Based on present demand trends, the current fuel price forecast and excluding the impact of special items, the company expects its fourth-quarter 2024 adjusted earnings per diluted share to be between $0.25 and $0.50. The company now expects its full-year 2024 adjusted earnings per diluted share3 to be between $1.35 and $1.60, the Group added.