Robert Isom
Chief Executive Officer at American Airlines Group
Thanks, Scott, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us.
This morning, American reported a fourth quarter GAAP net income of $803 million and a full year net income up $127 million. Excluding net special items, we reported a fourth quarter net income of $827 million and a full year net income of $328 million. Our performance in the fourth quarter and for the full year was driven by continued strength of demand and revenue environment and incredible efforts of the American Airlines team. We're tremendously proud what the team has accomplished over the past year. We are committed to running a reliable operation and we're delivering. Coming out of the holidays, American had the best completion factor of any major US airline. We also said we would return American to profitability and we've done that as well.
Our team has delivered a third consecutive quarterly profit and fourth quarter margins that are higher than the fourth quarter of 2019, despite our fuel price increasing by approximately 70%. We generated nearly $2.4 billion in pretax profits over the past three quarters and we're pleased to report a full year profit for the first time since 2019. In addition to running a reliable operation and generating sustained profit, we're making significant progress on repairing our balance sheet. We recently prepaid a $1.2 billion term-loan a year before its scheduled maturity date, and we have now reduced our total debt by more than $8 billion from peak levels in mid-2021. This puts us well past the halfway point of our $15 billion total debt reduction goal, only 18 months into the program. Derek will talk more about our deleveraging plans in just a few minutes. I'll talk more about the fourth quarter and full year results.
We produced revenues of $13.2 billion in the fourth quarter, an increase of 16.6% versus 2019 and the highest fourth quarter revenue in company history. Notably, we achieved this record revenue while flying 6.1% less capacity than we did in the fourth quarter of 2019. American also produced record revenues of $49 billion for the full year, which is a 7% increase over 2019, while flying 8.70% less capacity. Demand remains strong and our revenue performance is in-line with our expectations following our strong holiday performance. Post-holiday bookings are off to a strong start. In fact, this is our best-ever post-holiday booking period with broad strength across all entities and travel periods. Demand for domestic and short-haul international travel continues to lead the way. We expect the strong demand environment to continue in 2023 and anticipate further improvement in demand for long-haul international travel this year.
Now turning to the operation. The American Airlines team delivered a fantastic performance in the fourth quarter. We operated more than 475,000 flights in the quarter with an average load factor of approximately 84%. So, we ranked first in completion factor among the ninth largest US carriers. Our team delivered an even stronger performance over the holidays. Despite the challenging conditions in many parts of the country, American outperformed the industry over the December holiday period, ranking first-in completion factor. Key to our success, there's been sizing our airline for the resources we have available and the operating conditions we expect to encounter and we will continue to do that going forward.
We're doubling down on our efforts to run a reliable operation in 2023, including investing in our team, our fleet and technology to support our operations and we're seeing this work pay off as our operations is off to a strong start just a few weeks into 2023, including the best on-time arrival performance for the ninth largest US carrier so far this year. America is proud to operate the simplest, youngest and most efficient fleet among US network carriers. In August, we began taking deliveries of new 788 aircraft from Boeing for the first time in 15 months. In the fourth quarter, we took delivery of five 788's and we expect to receive the remaining four in the first-half of 2023. Our Boeing 789's are expected to be delivered starting in 2024.
During the fourth quarter, we also took delivery of seven A321neos, three E175s and five 737-800s from long-term storage. Derek will talk more about that. But what I'd like to say is that the results the American Airlines team produced in 2022 and what we are projecting in 2023 are proof positive that the actions we have taken in recent years that put us in a position of strength and allowed us to take full advantage of the recovery. We spent more than five years and the most complex integration in the history of the airline industry, three years navigated the pandemic and making the airline more efficient and now, we're poised to drive the business forward in 2023 and beyond. We have simplified and harmonized our fleet, modernizing our facilities, fine-tuned our network to focus on the most profitable flight, developed new partnerships, introduced new tools for our customers and team, and hired tens of thousands of people. Through it all, the American Airlines team has gone above and beyond to deliver strong operational and financial results.
Now, before I turn it over to Derek to provide more detail on our 2022 financial performance, I want to thank him for his partnership over the past 20 years as CFO. He's a great friend and has been a trusted advisors throughout my career. Quite simply, he is the best CFO in the history of the airline industry. His financial leadership has helped create the largest airline in the world, the mergers of America West and US Airways in 2005 and US Airways and American in 2013. Derek was instrumental in raising $25 billion in capital during the pandemic to ensure American would not just survive, but also be in a position to thrive on the other side of it. And I'm very pleased that Derek will remain at American Vice-Chairman and continue to lead our American Eagle and Cargo teams and serve as a Strategic Advisor to the company.
As we look-forward to 2023, we remain focused on running a reliable operation, achieving sustained profitability and reducing debt. We have made tremendous progress in all three of these areas thanks to Derek's leadership and we will continue to sharpen that focus with Devon May as our CFO. And on behalf of the entire American Airlines team, I want to thank Derek for his leadership and tremendous contributions to the airline as our CFO.
And now, I'll hand it over to Derek.