American Airlines closed at $12.24 on Monday, down 4.2% on 62 million shares, ahead of the carrier's first-quarter earnings call Thursday morning. [1] United closed off 2.8%. The airline's own April 9 guidance update cut Q1 EPS to a range of negative $0.50 to negative $0.10 against a Street consensus of −$0.37, and set fiscal-year guidance at $1.70 to $2.70 per share. [2] The paper's Delta two-billion-dollar fuel hedge brief from Monday is the thread American's Thursday print now joins.

The timing is delicate. American rejected Scott Kirby's reported February White House pitch for a United-American merger via a Friday-after-close statement, calling a combination "negative for competition and for consumers, and therefore inconsistent with our understanding of the Administration's philosophy toward the industry and principles of antitrust law." [3] The rejection lifted AAL 11% intraday on Friday on the Bloomberg scoop, then surrendered the gains by Monday's close as the merger-excitement trade gave way to pre-earnings fundamentals. The carrier burned $707 million in free cash flow in 2025 at near-record ticket prices; BofA cut its price target to $14 on April 1 and maintained Neutral. [2]

Thursday's call at 8:30 a.m. ET will frame the rest of the airline-earnings week. Delta has the hedge; United reported earlier and guided down; American is the late-cycle stress test of whether Brent above $100 and the ceasefire clock that expired Wednesday priced into Q1 or waits to price into Q2.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco