Fort Worth-based American Airlines lost $931 million in the fourth quarter to finish a 2021 year that was as much about surviving the COVID-19 and its variants as it was about recovering from the devastating pandemic, the company reported Thursday morning.
American’s losses totaled $2 billion for the full 2021, a vast improvement over the $8.9 billion the company last year, but the company noted that the omicron variant of COVID-19 did weigh on performance. That was particularly evident in December with sick calls from crew members that created cancellations during the busy holiday period. Those variants were a repeating theme through 2021.
“These results would have been better, were it not for omicron,” American Airlines CEO Doug Parker told CNBC Thursday morning. “We saw a large increase in cancellations, our net bookings through the quarter were fell from what had been about 80% of 2019 levels to less than 50% at the end of 2020 in the last week.”
