American Airlines says August traffic rose 3.1 percent on gains along Latin American routes

American Airlines says August traffic rose 3.1 pct

FORT WORTH, Texas — American Airlines said Friday that its August traffic rose 3.1 percent from a year ago thanks to a healthy gain in international travel.

Domestic traffic inched higher by 0.6 percent while international traffic increased 7.1 percent. Latin America traffic rose 9 percent.

AMR Corp.’s American said paying passengers flew 11.51 billion miles last month, compared with 11.17 billion miles in August 2009.

American boosted capacity by 3.2 percent, to 13.61 billion available seat miles. That’s the number of miles flown times seats on the plane. The airline added capacity on international routes, especially to Latin America.

The average plane was 84.6 percent full, down from 84.7 percent a year earlier.

For the first eight months of the year, traffic was up 1.7 percent, capacity dipped 0.3 percent, and the average occupancy rose to 82.2 percent from 80.7 percent.