American Airlines Reports Capacity Up in March

American Airlines Reports Capacity Up in March

American Airlines announced operational results for March 2014. The parent company operates both American Airlines and US Airways, and was formed by the merger of AMR Corp. and US Airways Group in December 2013.

The airline group only released consolidated data and did not break down results between American Airlines and US Airways. March is the third full month following the merger in which the two airlines operated under one corporate umbrella.

Consolidated system traffic for March was 18.5 billion revenue passenger miles, or RPMs, a year-over-year increase of 0.9%. Consolidated capacity was 22.6 billion available seat miles, or ASMs, a year-over-year increase of 2.9%.

Meanwhile, consolidated load factor for March was 81.8%, down 1.6 percentage points from March 2013.

American showed a small improvement in domestic operations, with a 2% year-over-year increase in both revenue passenger miles and available seat miles, while international RPMs dropped 2.1% year-over-year with a 5.6% increase in international ASMs. Mainline RPMs were up 0.6% with a 3.3% increase in mainline ASMs, while regional RPMs were up 3.5% with a 0.4% decrease in regional ASMs.

Despite numerous weather-related flight cancellations in the first two months of the year, American expects passenger revenue per available seat mile, or Prasm, in the first quarter of 2014 to increase by between 2.5% to 3.5% over the same period in 2013.