American Air cautions on sales while seeing bookings tick up

American Airlines Group Inc. reported a smaller fourth-quarter loss than expected and said ticket purchases are starting to recover from the effects of the coronavirus omicron variant, though cautioned that revenue would be weak this quarter.

The adjusted loss was $1.42 a share, American said in a statement Thursday. Analysts expected $1.48, based on the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue doubled from a year earlier to $9.43 billion, in line with what the carrier projected last week.

Bookings for flights one to two months in the future are near where they were before getting hit by omicron in the fourth quarter, said Chief Executive Officer Doug Parker.

“People have gotten to the point they believe this is going to be behind us before too long and they’re confident and making travel plans, certainly in the future,” he said on CNBC.

American fell 3.2% to $16.75 at 9:47 a.m. in New York. The stock had advanced 8.4% over the 12 months through Wednesday, the best performance in the S&P 500 Airlines Index, which declined 2.2%.

The airline said first-quarter revenue would be at least 20% below what it was three years ago and joined Delta Air Lines Inc. and United Airlines Holdings Inc. in projecting as much as a double-digit rise in expenses from three years ago, before the Covid-19 pandemic emerged. At American, nonfuel operating costs per mile are expected to climb 8%-10%.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based airline recently trimmed flying at regional partners because of pilot shortages linked to the coronavirus omicron variant. Delta and United also have reduced such flights, which ferry passengers from smaller cities to hub airports.

(Updates stock activity in fifth paragraph. An earlier version of this story was corrected to say that the fourth-quarter loss was narrower than expected.)