Ahead of publishing 2022 fourth quarter and full-year financial results on January 26, American Airlines said it expects revenue to have climbed by up to 17% in the fourth quarter when compared with the same period in 2019.
The projection tops earlier expectations of up to 13% and could mean adjusted earnings per share of up to US $1.17, almost double some previous forecasts.
"Really pleased with with the guidance today and, you know, it's been about what nine months since we were here and we talked about American’s goals, return to reliability, return to profitability, and, you know, certainly we've done some nice work on reliability especially over the holidays," chief executive Robert Isom told CNBC, according to a transcript published by the US TV news broadcaster.
The airline was similarly sanguine about its debt reduction efforts, saying it “achieved more than half of its goal to reduce total debt by US $15bn by the end of 2025”.
"Profitability means that we can be deleverage and you saw that we paid off some debt, some term loans US $1.2 billion at the end of the fourth quarter, you know, that kind of effort to reduce debt and achieve our goals of reducing debt by $15 billion by 2025, we’re 50% of the way through our target in just a short period of time. I'm really pleased with where we're headed," Isom said, speaking on CNBC's Squakbox.
American Airlines had to brave a late-December winter storm that caused travel chaos across the US, with rival Southwest Airlines simultaneously battered by a computer systems' failure that led to the cancellation of almost 17,000 flights.
"It absolutely had an impact and also we had some benefit from customers coming over over to American. But look, the quarter was largely settled by the time that we got to the holidays, you know, that impact lasted four or five days," Isom said, discussing the storm's impact.
The carrier's updates came as the US government's latest inflation figures showed the December consumer price index down 0.1%. Airfares, however, were down around 3%, following a similar drop the month before.
But with fares 28.5% above 2021, the impact of inflation is still being felt, with high fuel costs and spiralling wage demands hitting carriers' bottom lines and keeping fares relatively high despite the return in 2022 to something close to pre-2020, pre-pandemic travel demand.