American Eagle Traffic Jumped 11.7% in November

American Eagle, which does regional flying for American Airlines, flew fuller planes in November as traffic jumped 11.7 percent, outstripping an 6.8 percent increase in available seats.

Not counting its Executive Airlines unit, traffic was up 12.6 percent to 591 million revenue passenger miles. A revenue passenger mile equals one paying passenger flown one mile.

Capacity grew 6.8 percent overall and 7.1 percent to 822.8 million available seat miles not counting Executive.

Occupancy, or load factor, climbed 3.1 percentage points to 70.4 percent.

American Eagle’s November dovetailed with the results at American, where domestic traffic — the same kind handled by American Eagle — actually grew 1.4 percent.

For the first 11 months of the year, American Eagle said traffic fell 3.7 percent but capacity dropped further by 5.6 percent. Carriers have been trimming flights from their schedules in hopes of flying fuller planes amid a downturn in travel demand linked to the economic slump.

Shares of American parent AMR Corp. rose 8 cents to close at $6.87.

12/3/2009 6:37 PM FORT WORTH, Texas (AP)