American Airlines Ends March With Positive Cash Flow

Buoyed by an increase in demand for domestic travel sparked by spring break and the Easter/Passover holiday, American Airlines ended the month of March with a positive cash flow on an adjusted basis according to Reuters News Service.

Excluding daily payment of $8 million towards regular debt and severance packages, it was cash-flow positive, the company said in a regulatory filing.

American said it was only burning about $4 million of cash per day in March, compared with $30 million on average in the previous quarter. For this entire first quarter that ended March 31, American said its average daily cash burn would be about $27 million per day.

American ends the quarter with about $17.3 billion in total available liquidity.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is, the airline expects revenue to drop about 62 percent for the first quarter compared with the same time period in 2019. That was not unexpected, however, given the circumstances of the past year in fighting the coronavirus pandemic and the numerous travel restrictions.

American expects to post a loss of about $2.7 billion to $2.8 billion, excluding financial assistance under the U.S. payroll support program for airlines.