ATW Daily News

US majors post $578 million third-quarter loss

Thursday November 12, 2009

US major passenger airlines posted a cumulative third-quarter net loss of $578 million, narrowed from a $2.52 billion loss in the year-ago period, ATWOnline calculated. The nine carriers' combined revenue dropped 18% to $28.25 billion while expenses decreased 23.1% to $27.8 billion, producing an operating profit of $450 million, reversed from an operating loss of $1.97 billion for the three months ended Sept. 30, 2008. The quarter's top performer among the majors was Alaska Airlines parent Alaska Air Group with net income of $88 million. JetBlue Airways with net income of $15 million and AirTran Airways parent AirTran Holdings with net income of $10 million joined Alaska in the black, while the remaining six carriers suffered losses. The worst performer was American Airlines parent AMR Corp., which posted a net loss of $359 million.

Collective traffic lowered 2.7% to 188.11 billion RPMs on a 5.3% cut in capacity to 222.91 billion ASMs. Average load factor rose 2.1 points to 83.9%. Average yield fell 20.3% to 11.08 cents as RASM dipped 12% to 10.59 cents and CASM decreased 20.2% to 10.68 cents. CASM excluding fuel grew 4.2% to 7.48 cents.

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