Fourth-quarter revenue at American Airlines will be down as traffic declined in some international markets.
The carrier narrowed its expectation for pre-tax margin, excluding special items, to 10%/11% from an earlier projection of as much as 12%.
American’s traffic, or miles flown by paying passengers, slipped 7.4% across the Atlantic and 6.2% on routes to Latin America in December, while US domestic traffic edged up by 0.5% year on year. Pacific traffic, which represents smaller overall numbers, rose by 24.4%
The passenger load factor for the month was down 3.4 percentage points to 80.4%.
Annual traffic across the Atlantic was down by 1.3% over 2013 levels while overall international numbers remained static.
Fourth-quarter revenue from each seat flown a mile, an indicator of traffic and fares, is expected to be be unchanged to down 2%, American said.
The airline’s shares fell 4.7% at $49.58, the biggest decline since December 16, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Before yesterday, they had risen 77% over the past year.