Deja Vu

We Know Why (Less of) You Fly

Tags:

air travel,

commerce,

economics

“American Airlines’ Passenger Traffic Drops 13.5%,” The Dallas Morning News, Mar. 4, 2009.

American Airlines Inc. shrank its flying capacity 10.1 percent in February over a year earlier, but its passenger traffic dropped even more - 13.5 percent.

American flew 11.7 billion available seat miles last month, down from just under 13 billion a year earlier. The last time it operated less February capacity came in 1999 when an illegal pilot sickout forced American to ground thousands of flights.

The Fort Worth-based carrier reported that it filled 73.9 percent of its seats, down 2.9 points from 2008.

Shrinkage has been the order of the day in the U.S. airline industry since rising fuel bills pushed carriers into the red last year. The seven major carriers to report February traffic so far have reduced their capacity by 10.7 percent as a group compared to a year earlier.

“Postwar Plan of American Airlines,” advertisement, 1944.

Today American Airlines operates 8,365 miles of airways throughout the United States and into Canada and Mexico. We have filed applications for authority to operate 5,322 additional miles within the U.S. and 3,419 miles to Europe. The air-map above shows the cities which American Airlines now serves and seeks to serve. This is our present plan, but we believe that the public interest will require American to serve more cities.

This is our contribution to the network of air-service that is indispensable to the future growth, prosperity and protection of our nation.

Every city in our land must do business with many other cities all over our three million square miles. That calls for transportation of people, mail, merchandise and materials of many kinds. The swifter and more flexible the transportation facilities, the closer we become, and the more effectively we can work together.

In this war, our Airlines, cooperating with the Army Air Transport Command and the Naval Air Transport Service, are circling the globe with daily flights over arctics, jungles, oceans and deserts. What they are doing is the blueprint for your new world. It stems from the fact that air is universal, available to everyone, everywhere, alike, and it is our purpose to meet our air demand.

There is no pessimism among those who are thinking in terms of air transportation for the future. They see more new prosperity and more achievements of all kinds than were possible before.

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