American Airlines June traffic falls 8.1 percent

FORT WORTH, Texas - American Airlines said Monday its systemwide traffic fell 8.1 percent last month amid the continued downturn in passenger demand.

The airline, operated by parent company AMR Corp., reported June traffic of 10.89 billion revenue passenger miles, compared with 11.85 billion a year earlier. A revenue passenger mile measures one paying passenger flown one mile. The number of American's total passengers fell 9.3 percent in June from a year ago.

The carrier's capacity decreased 7.8 percent in June from a year ago, falling to 12.79 billion available seat miles from 13.86 billion available seat miles in 2008. Airlines have cut capacity to try and balance a steep drop in demand. A capacity cut can mean both cutting planes from the fleet or switching to smaller planes to fill a bigger percentage of the seats.

American's load factor, or occupancy rate, declined to 85.1 percent in June from 85.5 percent.

For the first six months of this year, American Airlines reported traffic fell 10.1 percent to 60.14 billion revenue passenger miles. Capacity was reduced by 7.8 percent to 76.32 billion available seat miles. Occupancy in the January to June period fell to 78.8 percent from 80.8 percent.

Shares of AMR shed 9 cents to $4.13 in morning trading.

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