American Airlines traffic tumbles 6.6 percent in April

FORT WORTH, Texas—American Airlines, the biggest U.S. carrier, said Monday its traffic dropped 6.6 percent in April after it was forced to cancel about 3,300 flights to inspect wiring aboard its fleet of MD-80 planes.

April traffic fell to 10.79 billion revenue passenger miles, from 11.56 billion a year earlier. A revenue passenger mile is an industry measurement accounting for one paying passenger flown one mile.

American shed 4.3 percent of its capacity during the month, with the biggest declines affecting its domestic network as a result of the MD-80 inspections. Overall capacity fell to 13.46 billion available seat miles from 14.06 billion a year before.

The carrier was forced to ground its 300 MD-80s to inspect and wrap wire bundles to comply with federal safety standards .

Load factor, a measure of occupancy, sank 2 percentage points to 80.1 percent.

American flew a total of 7.5 million passengers in April.

For the first four months of the year, traffic is down 1.9 percent to 43.27 billion revenue passenger miles. Capacity during the period dropped 2.2 percent to 54.5 billion available seat miles, while occupancy edged 0.3 percentage points higher to 79.4 percent.

AMR shares sank 40 cents, or 4.3 percent, to $8.98.