American Airlines October Traffic Down 2.6%

American Airlines late Wednesday reported its traffic in October fell 2.6% to 10.24 billion revenue passenger miles from 10.51 billion revenue passenger miles in October 2008. A revenue passenger mile is equal to one passenger flown one mile. American's total capacity last month declined 7.3% to 12.33 billion available seat miles from 13.3 billion a year earlier. Load factor, or the percentage of available seats filled with passengers, rose four percentage points to 83.1%. Meanwhile, American Eagle reported its traffic rose 6% to 680.1 revenue passenger miles while capacity edged up 0.7% to 927.4 million available seat miles. Both American and American Eagle are units of AMR Corp. (AMR).