American Airlines traffic in August fell

FORT WORTH — American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp., said Thursday that systemwide traffic and capacity fell in August, compared with the same month a year ago, while occupancy rose.

The carrier said it flew 11.17 billion revenue passenger miles last month, an 8.1 percent decline from 12.16 billion recorded a year ago.

A revenue passenger mile is an industry metric measuring one paying passenger flown one mile.

Available seat miles, or capacity, fell 9.4 percent to 13.19 billion from 14.56 billion in August 2008.

Load factor, or occupancy, rose 1.2 percentage points to 84.7 percent from 83.5 percent a year ago.

Year to date through the end of August, revenue passenger miles fell 9.3 percent to 82.98 billion from 91.51 billion a year ago, while available seat miles fell 8.0 percent to 102.88 billion from 111.84 billion a year ago, and load factor fell 1.1 percentage points to 80.7 percent from 81.8 percent a year ago.