Airline stocks decline after week of modest gains

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Airline stocks declined Thursday after two days of modest gains with Ireland's Ryanair Holdings (ryaay) pulling down the sector. The NYSE Arca Airline Index (xal) fell nearly 1% to 32.48 with all but two of its 15 components in the red. U.S.-traded shares of Ryanair lost 2.6% to $27.92, Tam SA (tam) declined 1% to $19.98 and JetBlue Airways (jblu) fell 1.7% to $5.14. Bucking the trend, US Airways added 2.6% to $5.16 after posting a sharp jump in its December revenue thanks to higher demand and fewer available seats. Shares of bankrupt AMR Corp. (aamrq) were delisted before the opening bell.

© 1997-2008 MarketWatch.com, Inc. All rights reserved. See details at http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/docs/useragreement.asp.