American Airlines reported a $931 million dollar loss for the fourth quarter, but management says traffic is returning faster than for other airlines. For all of 2021, American lost $2 billion. Excluding net special items, American lost $5.4 billion.
"Our results for 2021 were significantly improved over 2020, but the impact of the omicron variant has affected the timing of a full revenue recovery," says American Airlines President Robert Isom, who will become chief executive officer at the end of March.
Isom says American is on a pace to return to profitability in March.
"Bookings are recovering quickly after dropping off considerably in early December, though they're still not back to pre-omicron levels," he says.
Chief Financial Officer Derrick Kerr says capacity in the first quarter will be down 8-10% from the first quarter of 2019. He says revenue will be down 20-22% from the first quarter of 2019.
"COVID-impacted demand and elevated fuel prices will continue to put pressure on our near-term margin," he says.
But Kerr says American generated $9.4 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter, the largest number since the start of the pandemic. He also says capacity for all of 2022 is likely to reach 95% of 2019.
Outgoing CEO Doug Parker says American is working with AT&T, Verizon and the FAA to resolve issues with C-band 5G service near runways. AT&T and Verizon have agreed to delay the rollout of the service near airports over concerns they could interfere with aircraft equipment used during take-offs and landings.
"It's taken a while to get to the right spot, but I feel like we're in the right spot," Parker says. "I don't think you're going to see any material disruption going forward because of this."
Parker says he started warning about potential issues two years ago.
"We get the sense the right people are talking to each other, and everyone agrees it doesn't make sense to deploy any more 5G until we're certain it's not going to have a disruptive effect on airlines," he says. "It wasn't our finest hour, I think, as a country to get us to that point, but the good news is we now have what should have been going on for quite some time."
This week, AT&T said it was voluntarily postponing the launch of some 5G areas near runways.
"At our sole discretion, we have voluntarily agreed to temporarily defer turning on a limited number of towers around certain airport runways as we continue to work with the aviation industry and the FAA to provide further information about our 5G deployment, since they have not utilized the two years they’ve had to responsibly plan for this deployment," the company wrote in a statement.
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