NEW YORK — American Airlines parent company AMR lost $238 million in the third quarter on employee severance payouts and other costs related to its bankruptcy.
Without those charges, the Fort Worth, Texas, company posted an operating profit as it cut costs, paid less for fuel and benefited from a partnership that boosted traffic overseas.
The quarterly loss works out to 71 cents per share. A year ago, AMR lost $162 million, or 48 cents per share.
AMR Corp. said its core performance improved. It made more money per passenger and flights were fuller than any quarter before.
That effort was overshadowed late in the quarter by widespread cancellations and delays in September, which the airline blamed on its pilots.
“We haven’t delivered well enough for our customers in recent weeks and our operations have certainly not been up to our high standards,” Virasb Vahidi, AMR’s chief commercial officer, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Still, the airline said that costs related to the slowdown weren’t material to its quarterly results.
Vahidi noted that after almost a year in bankruptcy, AMR is more than halfway to its goal of closing a gap in margins with its rivals.
Job openings amid buyouts
American Airlines said Wednesday that it will post job openings for 1,500 flight attendants next month. It will start hiring in December and put the new staff in training beginning in January.
That may seem like a strange move for a company trying to cut labor costs under bankruptcy protection. But the airline needs to replace some of the 2,205 flight attendants who have accepted a $40,000 buyout to leave the company – the equivalent of about a year’s salary. It’s the first time the company has hired flight attendants in 11 years. The buyouts were part of a concessionary contract approved by flight attendants in August and were aimed at reducing the number of layoffs. The departing flight attendants all started working before the 9/11 terrorist attacks that included the crashes of two American Airlines jets. Since then, they’ve seen their company lose more than $10 billion. In 2003, workers accepted pay cuts to keep American out of bankruptcy, then were outraged to discover that hundreds of management employees had received bonuses.
The Associated Press
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