American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ: AAL) today reported its third-quarter 2024 financial results, including:
“The American Airlines team continues to focus on running a reliable operation and managing costs across the airline,” said American’s CEO Robert Isom. “We have taken aggressive action to reset our sales and distribution strategy and reengage the business travel community, which we’re confident will improve our revenue performance over time. We have heard great feedback from travel agencies and corporate customers as we work to rebuild the foundation of our commercial strategy and make it easy for customers to do business with American.”
American continues to evolve its sales and distribution strategy to address feedback from corporate and agency partners and regain lost share. In the third quarter, the airline renegotiated competitive contracts with a majority of the largest travel agencies and many of its top corporate customers, reintroduced Corporate Experience benefits for corporate travelers, and increased support for corporate and agency customers by adding sales account managers and sales support staff.
The American Airlines team demonstrated its continued resilience in the third quarter by quickly recovering from several irregular operations events, most notably the CrowdStrike outage and Hurricanes Debby and Helene. Despite the impact of these events, the American team delivered strong operational results in the third quarter, including the highest completion factor among U.S. network carriers and delivering the airline’s highest third-quarter load factor since the merger of American and US Airways in 2013.
American delivered earnings results ahead of prior guidance. The company produced record third-quarter revenue of $13.6 billion, an increase of 1.2% year over year. On a GAAP basis, the company produced an operating margin of 0.7% in the quarter. Excluding the impact of net special items1, the company produced an adjusted operating margin of 4.7% in the quarter.
American continued to strengthen its balance sheet in the third quarter by reducing total debt2 by approximately $360 million. The company is more than $13 billion toward its goal of reducing total debt2 by $15 billion by the end of 2025. The company ended the quarter with approximately $11.8 billion of total available liquidity, comprised of cash and short-term investments plus undrawn capacity under revolving credit and other facilities.
Based on present demand trends, the current fuel price forecast and excluding the impact of special items, the company expects its fourth-quarter 2024 adjusted earnings per diluted share3 to be between $0.25 and $0.50. The company now expects its full-year 2024 adjusted earnings per diluted share3 to be between $1.35 and $1.60.
For additional financial forecasting detail, please refer to the company’s investor update, furnished with this press release with the SEC on Form 8-K. This filing is also available at aa.com/investorrelations.
The $24.3 billion proceeds allow the company to maintain a cash balance above its $10 billion target despite an expected $14 billion outflow in 2024, fund its likely cash use…
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