American exercised its Azul warrants for about 8% and put its alliances chief on the board, while United already holds a matching $100MM stake.

I wrote in July that American was growing itself into a hole , and on October 22nd it reported a third-quarter GAAP net loss of $269MM . Two days earlier, Azul announced that American had completed a $100MM investment in the Brazilian airline. That money was committed back in February, so the timing of the announcement is inconvenient for optics (though the company lost $382MM that quarter, even more than Q2.) The company that is spending abroad is the same one trying to get its balance sheet to a 3.0x net debt to EBITDAR target.…