AA posts 2025 Q3 loss
 

October 23, 2025
FORT WORTH, Texas, Oct. 23, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ: AAL) today reported its third-quarter 2025 financial results, including:
NEWSWIRE) -- American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ: AAL) today
Record third-quarter revenue of $13.7 billion
Third-quarter GAAP net loss of $114 million, or ($0.17) per diluted share
Excluding net special items, third-quarter net loss of $111 million, or ($0.17) per diluted share
Fourth-quarter adjusted EPS expected to be between $0.45 and $0.75 with full-year adjusted EPS2 expected to be between $0.65 and $0.95
Full-year free cash flow expected to be over $1 billion



Some additional information on AA:

Balance sheet and liquidity -
The company ended the third quarter with $36.8 billion of total debt4 and $29.9 billion of net debt. The company remains on track to achieve its goal of total debt4 less than $35 billion by the end of 2027. The company ended the third quarter with $10.3 billion of total available liquidity, comprised of cash and short-term investments plus undrawn capacity under revolving credit and other facilities.


Delta can pay down $1 Billion in debt in a quarter, but AA's 'goal' is to pay down $1.8 Billion in debt over the next 2 years. Something has to fundamentally change with AA. When you have record revenues and still lose money, while your two main competitors just made a boatload of money in the quarter, you've real systemic issues.

I'm rooting for AA to turn things around, but it simply won't happen with the current management team.

“The American Airlines team is delivering on our commitments,” said American’s CEO Robert Isom. “We’ve built a strong foundation, with best-in class cost management and a focus on strengthening the balance sheet. Looking forward, I’m confident that continued investments in our network, customer experience and loyalty program will position us well to drive revenue growth and shareholder value in 2026 and beyond.”

Q3 is not the cash cow it used to be, but DL and UA had respectable profits for the quarter, and even WN managed a small profit.

Not selling enough miles to banks as they have turned off premium flyers who are now free agents?

Post Crandall, aside from the brief tenure of Horton, AA has attracted some serious 🤡.

Interestingly, the forward guidance was good, stock is up 5% in premarket.

But it apparently was a cash cow for United and Delta. AAmazing!

United and Delta seemed to have no problems making record profits during the same period.
something is seriously wrong here and I’m glAAd I jumped off this ship in 2018 and switched to United/Delta!

Combination of high debt (interest costs), lack of widebodies for lucrative International, operational issues, management too focused on being Frontier Airlines "plus" and rising costs. Not sure how AA's cc deal compares to DL and UA based upon profitability.

On the upside on the call they did confirm the 777-200 fleet "nose to tail" refurb would get 25% more premium seating in J and W cabins. That sounds something like 2 more rows of J (37-> 45) and 1 row of W (24 -> 32).

AA shouldn't have ditched the A330-200's until Boeing delivered enough Dreamliners!

They also shouldn’t have canceled the A350 order they’d inherited from U.S. Airways. American would have gotten them for a bargain, but Vasu Raja killed it by telling Airbus execs the A350 was a “lawnmower” and AA was a “high-rise penthouse”.

I'm not saying AA shouldn't have kept the A330s around longer, but hindsight is always 20/20. We all make mistakes nearly every day. If we all had a crystal ball to see 3, 5 and 10 years into the future, we'd all do things differently today. The A330s leaving the fleet are not the reason, nor cause American Airlines is losing money. It's not as if keeping 10-15 A330s around would have made them profitable. AA's troubles are much deeper and systemic than that.

Not disputing that AA's issues are systemic and decades in the making, but retiring the a332s was a stupid decision at the time and in hindsight.

They are almost brand new, still being paid for and were stored, not scrapped. People were unretiring aircraft in desperation at the same time as AA was sitting around with their head up their backsides - Parker and Isom are LCC people who Peter's Principled out; the concept of a subfleet is an anathema, no matter how much financial sense it made.

This one I am more ok with. The 77Ws are young and the 789s can handle the smaller range routes. Given AA's route map, the 77Es are easily replaced by the 78K.

The a350 is a great aircraft, I just don't see the value for AA given their fleet makeup. The a332s are a different story as AA already had them.

The irony - AA had 45 seat 77Es and then cut them down to 37.

Wonder how much money they spent ripping seat back entertainment systems out and densifying the cabin to come up with more seats they couldn’t fill.

You all are talking about revenue issues:
- Increase in Premium cabins
-densifying cabins
-selling miles to banks

AA shows in the 3rd quarter report that their problem (like most businesses ) is not revenue, it is cost containment.
Like paying for the A330's and not flying them, might as well burn $100 bills in the parking lot in Dallas :(.

Every large company has 10-15% more managers than they need: go fire them, tomorrow as people cost, not just salary but especially benefits are the single leading cost to most businesses.

Obviously United and Delta are getting more productivity out of their workers and assets (planes and routes).

Any stats to compare,
like revenue per employee