American Airlines expands its US flight schedule

The airlines' summer travel season won't be as busy or profitable as last year's. But it's looking less dire than expected. American Airlines is seeing "improving demand for air travel," the company said Thursday, prompting it to plan a sizable increase in flights for July. American will fly 55% of its normal domestic schedule next month — a huge jump from the 20% of normal that it flew in May.<br/>According to American, flying turned a corner in May. The number of customers it was flying daily surged to about 110,000, which was a 71% increase from April. The percentage of seats filled on every flight grew to 55% for the last week of May, up 15% from the average in April. That mirrors recent data from TSA, which said earlier this week that it screened nearly 949,000 passengers last weekend. That's a large increase from the 476,000 people it screened over the first weekend of May 2020. But in May 2019 roughly 2m passengers passed through security checkpoints daily, according to TSA data. Still, American's more robust schedule is providing some optimism for a battered industry: Shares soared as much as 30% in early trading. "We're seeing a slow but steady rise in domestic demand," said Vasu Raja, American's SVP of network strategy. <br/>