American Airlines parent lost $414 million in quarter when two of its jet were hijacked

Wednesday, October 24th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) _ American Airlines parent AMR Corp. lost a record $414 million in the third quarter, a period when two of its jets were hijacked and crashed during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The world's biggest airline company said high fuel prices and weakness in the travel industry even before the attacks contributed to its largest quarterly loss ever.

The loss amounted to $2.68 a share for the July-September period. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call had expected a loss of $2.61 by Fort Worth-based AMR.

AMR had earned $322 million, or $1.96 per share, for the same period a year ago. Revenue fell to $4.82 billion from $5.26 billion a year earlier.

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, with each building struck by one American jumbo jet, the airline has eliminated the equivalent of 20,000 jobs throughout its system.

``With the economy weak and fuel prices still relatively high, we and the rest of the industry were experiencing a very difficult financial quarter even before the Sept. 11 attacks,'' said Don Carty, AMR chairman and chief executive. ``But the attacks and their aftermath further weakened traffic and had a staggering effect on our overall financial performance, producing the largest quarterly loss in our long and proud history.''

He said he and the entire AMR board of directors executives would take no compensation for the rest of 2001, and that every senior officer had taken voluntary pay cuts.