American Eagle says traffic fell in October

FORT WORTH, Texas - American Eagle Airlines, a regional carrier for AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, said Wednesday its October traffic fell 15.5 percent as capacity dropped 10.8 percent.

In October American Eagle flew 641.7 million revenue passenger miles, or one passenger flown one mile. That was down from 759.7 million miles last October.

Capacity fell to 921.3 million available seat miles, from 1 million last October.

Load factor, or occupancy, fell 3.9 percentage points to 69.6 percent.

Airlines have been reducing capacity to try to stay ahead of a travel drop-off as the economy softens.

For the first ten months of the year, American Eagle flew a total of almost 6.8 billion revenue passenger miles, down 9.9 percent from 7.5 billion in the same period last year.

Capacity dropped 5.4 percent to 9.6 billion available seat miles, while occupancy fell 3.5 percentage points to 70.4 percent, the company said.

Shares of AMR rose 12 cents to $11.17 in morning trading.

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