American Airlines CFO Devon May has expressed optimism for 2026 following a year of turbulence and economic uncertainty in 2025.
Speaking at Goldman Sachs Industrials and Materials Conference yesterday (December 3), May said that while bookings “slowed” during the government shutdown, affecting bookings in late October through early December, the American's early 2026 bookings are “exactly what we expected them to look like back in October”.
“We're only booked at 25%, but our booked revenue that we have today is exactly what we expected six weeks ago,” he said.
The CFO added that the shutdown's impact on government travel amounted to less than $1 million a day.
"That's what we experienced really through the month of October — the slowing of bookings really peaked when we got the FAA mandated cancellations somewhere around November 7.”
May went on to say that the shutdown had initially impacted holiday bookings in December, but this impact has now lifted.
“Bookings for the Thanksgiving break for early December, even through the Christmas and New Year's break, had slowed materially for that period,” said the CFO. “It has since come back with bookings coming in as we would expect right now.”
The company wants to “see how the next couple of weeks go” before it updates the market.
Rival US airline Delta revealed yesterday that the government shutdown will impact its fourth-quarter pre-tax profitability by around $200 million, or 25 cents of earnings per share.
May said he doesn't believe the government shutdown impact will “bleed over” into 2026. He cited the arrival of 15 to 16 new Airbus A321XLR aircraft by the end of next year as one reason for the airline to be “excited”, with the extra long-range aircraft providing greater advantage in the competitive transcontinental and European markets.
In October, the airline announced its first XLR route will be New York (JFK) to Edinburgh, commencing in March next year.
However, he did note that salaries may temper some of these gains.
“Our salaries and benefits in 2025 did see a meaningful bump up from agreements that we reached back in 2024 and some of those prior,” he said. "We're not going to have a meaningful step-up on salaries and benefits next year, but we will see some wage pressure.
“Pilots for us and a lot of other carriers in the industry are getting a 4% wage increase, so it's growing faster than inflation.”
He added that maintenance costs are “not something that we see as a really big headwind” for next year.
Additionally, American ended the third quarter with $36.8bn of total debt and $29.9bn of net debt, though the company is on track to reduce its total debt to less than $35bn by the end of 2027.
During the conference, May said American's focus is on this balance sheet target before it shifts its focus to shareholder return.
“We want to get to a BB credit rating," he said. “We want to get net debt inside of $30bn and total debt inside of $35bn.
"That's the right thing for our shareholders today. We're excited to have that conversation about shareholder remuneration going forward, but right now we're focussed on improving the balance sheet.”