WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Airline stocks rose modestly on Thursday after a better-than-expected jobs report gave a boost to the wider market. The NYSE Arca Airline Index (xal) added less than 1% to 29.80 points with all but five of its 15 components trading up. Shares of American parent AMR Corp. (amr) rose less than 1%, SkyWest Inc. (skyw) added 1.7% and Republic Airways (rjet) climbed 3%. The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index (spx) edged up by a fraction to 1,145 points.

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