WASHINGTON - American Airlines holding company AMR Corp. said Wednesday it posted a net loss for the first quarter of 162 million dollars as surging fuel prices hurt its bottom line.
That compared with a 166 million dollar loss in the same period in 2004 for the largest US airline company.
The loss, amounting to one dollar per share, came even as revenues grew 5.3 percent to 4.75 billion dollars.
"In many ways, the story for the first quarter is very similar to what we have seen the past several quarters," said AMR chairman and chief executive Gerard Arpey.
"The combination of extraordinarily high fuel prices and low fares continues to take a heavy financial toll."
Arpey said the company paid 346 million dollars more for fuel during the first quarter of 2005 than it did during the same period the year before.
"On the other hand," Arpey said, "while the financial environment remains very difficult, we are nonetheless performing well in many other important areas. Our employee and aircraft productivity are at historically high levels, more customers are choosing American, and our on-time performance has improved significantly."
04/20/2005 16:31 GMT