American Airlines soars on Wall Street on upbeat flight plan

Shares of American Airlines posted a record percent gain Thursday after carrier said it will aggressively d back flights in July — a bet that slow recovery in air travel will gain speed this summer as states re-open ir ecomies. American said it plans to operate 55% of U.S. flights that it ran in July 2019. That would a huge increase over 20% schedule that American ran in April and May. Overseas trips are expected to recover more slowly. American will operate just 20% of international flights that it ran last July.

American could still cancel many July flights right up until departure time, but investors appeared to regard planned schedule as a sign of confidence that air travel is coming back. Shares of American Airlines Group Inc., which is based in Fort Worth, Texas, rose 41% to close at $16.72. That's stock's biggest one-day percent gain since current company was formed by a 2013 merger with US Airways. Or airline stocks were carried along in American's slipstream, although y rose by smaller percents. stocks have been battered this year, and American's shares are still down 42% in 2020.

American is ding flights to Florida, mountain states and or vacation destinations, indicating that leisure travelers are returning faster than people flying for business.

Bookings are still down everywhere, but y are down 80% in rast compared with about 40% in states such as Texas and Florida that have reopened more of ir ecomies, said Vasu Raja, American’s senior vice president of network strategy.

“If you're a leisure customer, you kw you can go to Florida and hotels will be open, restaurants will be open," he said. “You're unclear if that will be case if you go to California.”

In April, restrictions aimed at curbing spre of new coronavirus caused air travel to plummet to levels t seen since 1950s. Some days, fewer than 100,000 people passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints. numbers have grown steily since n, to roughly 300,000 people a day, but that is still nearly 90% below last year's figures.

American has seen same trend. At end of April, it was carrying only 32,000 passengers a day. By end of May, that h risen to 110,000 — still a tiny percent of pre-pandemic crowds.