This growth was outpaced by a 2.5% increase in capacity, resulting in the January load factor dropping 0.4 percentage points to 75.8%.

American Airlines' international traffic increased by 6.2% on a capacity increase of 7.2%, while domestic traffic declined by 0.7% and capacity on domestic routes was reduced by 0.5%.

The airline's passenger numbers for January were almost unchanged year-on-year, showing a rise of 0.1% to 6.7m.

((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected]))