American Airlines joins its rivals in saying “actually, you know what, never mind” about full-year guidance
The airline reported its first-quarter earnings Thursday morning.
The big four airlines have now all reported their earnings, and one thing is clear: the seatbelt sign is on for 2025.
Shares of American Airlines ticked down premarket Thursday after the airline reported its first-quarter earnings. Revenue came in at $12.55 billion, a hair above estimates but down slightly from the same period last year.
Like its rivals Delta Air Lines , Southwest Airlines, and Frontier Airlines, American responded to tariffs and their as yet unknown hit on travel demand by pulling its full-year outlook.
Removing one-time items, the carrier reported a loss per share of -$0.59, better than the -$0.70 expected by analysts and American’s own downwardly adjusted forecast of between -$0.60 and -$0.80.
Looking to the current quarter, American forecast revenue to land somewhere between down 2% and up 1%. American fared similarly to Southwest, which reported earnings after the bell Wednesday, logging a 1.6% drop in revenue and forecasting an up to 4% drop for the second quarter.
American’s performance isn’t all that surprising. Even before tariffs began shaking the industry, when rivals like Delta and United Airlines were still painting wildly rosy first-quarter outlooks, American’s forecast was gloomy.
Now that tariffs are here, billions of dollars have been wiped off the big four carriers’ valuations and several airlines have made cuts to their April-June capacity. This month, analysts from both Jefferies and Goldman Sachs slapped American with downgrades.
American earlier this month ended its free Wi-Fi holdout, announcing that no-cost connectivity would hit 90% of its flights beginning in January 2026. Despite big revenue from ancillary charges like Wi-Fi and bags (American scored an estimated $8.4 billion from such fees in 2023), the carrier was pressured by its big four rivals to begin offering the perk.
