American Airlines Earnings: Underperformance Continues

The COVID-19 pandemic has decimated airlines' financial results in 2020. In the U.S., bookings and passenger traffic plunged steeply beginning in March as the pandemic spread. Despite a modest rebound in demand during May and June, both metrics remain dramatically below 2019 levels.

American Airlines (NASDAQ: AAL) has been one of the biggest casualties of this massive downturn. On Thursday morning, the airline giant reported extremely weak results for the second quarter and didn't give investors much reason to be optimistic about the future, either.

American Airlines didn't cut quite as much capacity as its top competitors during the second quarter, partly because it saw an opportunity to capture pockets of demand late in the quarter. For Q2 as a whole, the carrier reduced capacity 76.4% year over year. For comparison, Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) cut capacity by 85.2% and United Airlines (NASDAQ: UAL) slashed capacity by a remarkable 87.8% last quarter.

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Source Fool.com