Since falling demand often leads to lower prices, the news that American Airlines traffic dropped in August may turn out to be good news for the future of cheap airplane tickets and cheap vacation packages. American flew paying customers 11.46 billion miles in August which was a 0.4 percent decrease from the 11.51 billion miles flown in August of the prior year. Domestic travel, which makes up almost 75 percent of the airlines operations, fell 2.6 percent, while international traffic increased 3 percent, largely due to growing trans-Pacific travel. In a bid to reduce costs, American had cut back its passenger capacity a little over 1 percent, leaving it with 13.45 billion available seat miles. The average American plane flew modestly fuller in August. Its occupancy rate was 85.3 percent last month vs. 84.6 percent the year before. American, unlike Delta and US Airways, has not revealed how much it lost from Hurricane Irene in August which resulted in the cancellation of thousands of flights on the East Coast. Delta put its losses at $15 million from the hurricane, while US Airways projected losses ranging between $8 and $10 million. Americans passenger traffic through August of 2011 is 1.4 percent higher than the prior year. Capacity is up 1.7 percent, while its average occupancy rate dropped to 82 percent vs. 82.2 percent last year. Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com www.cheapfares.com employees enjoy writing and sharing travel news articles that engage them and believe others will find interesting.