NEW YORK—Consumers returned to the malls in August for a late back-to-school buying spree, helping many retailers rebound from July’s sluggish pace. But analysts still worry that the weakening housing market and higher food and gas prices will curtail shopping in the critical months ahead.

As the nation’s retailers reported solid sales results Thursday, winners crossed all sections of the industry and included Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Pacific Sunwear of California and Saks Inc.

“It certainly looks like the final week and a half in August drove strong back-to-school apparel selling,” said Ken Perkins, president of RetailMetrics LLC, a research company in Swampscott, Mass. “But I am still concerned going forward. We still have all the macro headwinds.”

August’s results were helped in part by a growing trend among schools to start classes later, delaying back-to-school purchasing. Still, a slumping housing market, the shrinking availability of credit and turbulent financial markets weigh on consumers, according to the New York-based Conference Board’s report late last month.

Wal-Mart (), the world’s largest retailer, posted a 3.1 percent increase in same-store sales or sales at stores open at least a year. Same-store sales are considered a key indicator of a retailer’s health. The results were better than the 1.5 percent estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

Saks Inc. (), which operates upscale Saks Fifth Avenue, reported a robust 18.2 percent gain in same-store sales, beating the 9.2 percent estimate.

Limited Brands Inc. () had a modest 1 percent rise in same-store sales, below the 1.4 percent forecast.

Among teen retailers, Wet Seal Inc.() reported a 1.7 percent gain in same-store sales, better than the 0.6 percent estimate.

Pacific Sunwear () posted a 9.6 percent gain in same-store sales, surpassing the 0.9 percent forecast.

NEWARK, New Jersey: Travelers to the United States: Beware.

Flyers who arrive at an American airport from places like Hong Kong, Singapore or London can expect significant delays in connecting flights, and the trend is set to worsen.

The reasons include an overtaxed air traffic control system in the United States that is probably at least a decade away from being replaced, and a handful of big hub airports that at times are operating above their practical capacity.

“It is such an unbelievable mess out there,” said Cheryl Geib, who, as corporate travel manager for the Grant Thornton accounting firm, arranges trips for hundreds of workers and then listens to many of them complain about delays.

Passengers are understandably angry when they are stuck on a delayed flight. But they should not necessarily be surprised - especially those traveling on flights like American Airlines 1659, departing every afternoon from Newark to Chicago.

Flight 1659 is the most chronically delayed of all flights on a full-size jet operated by a major U.S. airline. It arrived at OHare Airport at least 15 minutes late 84 percent of the time during a 12-month period ended in June.

And when Flight 1659 was late, it was really late - an average of 87 minutes behind schedule, or roughly the time it takes for the American MD-80 to actually fly the route.

Bob Cordes, a vice president for planning at American, a unit of AMR, has at his disposal a formidable array of tools to try to make the airlines fleet of 668 big jets run on time, including advanced scheduling software.

But he often feels powerless to remedy persistently late flights.

For Flight 1659, Cordes said, he has even sought outside help: “We went to church and lit a few candles.”

In all, more than 100 U.S. flights are officially late - by at least 15 minutes - 70 percent or more of the time. And most of those arrive, on average, more than an hour later than scheduled, the Transportation Department found in an analysis of a year of flights.

(A full years data smoothes out the effect of seasonal miseries caused by summer thunderstorms and winter snow.)

Fliers might expect some short-term relief, as a summer marked by widespread flight cancellations and delays, and the most crowded planes in the history of jet travel, comes to an end.

But the long-term outlook is not good, and travelers should brace themselves for a growing number of chronically late planes, grim clones of Flight 1659.

Airlines, to save money, compressed their schedules in recent years - often planning departures with 30 minutes or less on the ground between flights. That makes it next to impossible to catch up for the day, once a plane hopping from city to city falls behind.

Newark Airport has more than half of the chronically late flights. Its operations are particularly vulnerable to weather problems, said Leo Prusak, the New York district manager for the Federal Aviation Administration, who also oversees Kennedy and La Guardia airports.

American Flight 1659 is scheduled to take off at 5:55 p.m., the busiest time of the day, just as a long line of overseas flights leaves Newark and dozens of regional jets prepare to carry connecting passengers to smaller cities.

Continental Airlines and its regional jet operator, ExpressJet, account for most of the flights at Newark. And ExpressJet, operating there under Continentals name, has more than one-third of the chronically late flights on the Transportation Departments list.

American, with a smaller presence at Newark, suffers along, as do many of its passengers. On June 20, Flight 1659, scheduled to land in Chicago at 7:35 p.m., did not deliver its bleary-eyed passengers until 1:31 a.m., according to FlightAware, a company that tracks flight performance.

Travel experts repeatedly urge fliers to book trips in the morning to minimize the risk of delays. But for many people, Flight 1659 offers the promise of convenience, at least in theory.

Some business travelers plan their schedules defensively, with the help of Web sites like Flight-Aware or FlightStats.com.

FlightAware offers daily arrival times going back four months.

FlightStats provides flight ratings

US Airways, also struggling with delays at Newark, is trying to get its flights to and from Charlotte, North Carolina, a major hub, off the chronically late list.

David Seymour, a vice president, said the airline even added another plane to the Charlotte-Newark rotation, without scheduling a flight, to double the time on the ground between some flights and reduce delays.

(09-06) 07:46 PDT NEW YORK, (AP) —

Stocks dipped Thursday as investors, trying to gauge whether the economy is holding up in the face of a weakening housing market, grappled with mixed data and soaring oil prices.

The sluggish housing market remains a key concern on Wall Street, and the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday that homeowners beginning the foreclosure process in the second quarter reached a record 0.65 percent. It was the third consecutive quarter that the figure reached an all-time high.

Though Wall Street wants growth to be slow enough to merit a rate cut from the Federal Reserve when it meets Sept. 18, it does not want to see the economy weaken to the point of recession.

It also doesn’t want to see signs of accelerating inflation Д such as surging crude-oil prices, which spiked above $77 a barrel Thursday on supply worries after the U.S. embassy in Nigeria said American and other Western interests in the country are at risk of a terrorist attack. Inflationary risks have kept the Fed from lowering interest rates in recent months.

Still, the job market, the service sector and August retail sales look good. Last week, for the first time in seven weeks, claims for unemployment benefits dropped, the Labor Department said. It also reported that worker productivity jumped to an annual growth rate of 2.6 percent in the April to June quarter, much better than expected.

The snapshots boded well for Friday’s August employment report, the week’s most anticipated piece of economic data. If Americans are working, they can usually keep paying their mortgages and spending money.

And with investors alert for any sign that recent financial market turmoil has hurt consumer spending, better-than-expected August sales from major retailers Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp. came as a welcome surprise. So did the Institute for Supply Management’s reading on the non-manufacturing sector, which showed that activity expanded in August at the same rate as in July.

In mid-morning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 4.72, or 0.04 percent, to 13,300.75, after rising in earlier trading.

Broader stock indicators also turned lower. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was down 2.42, or 0.16 percent, at 1,469.87, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 6.78, or 0.26 percent, to 2,599.17.

Bonds were little changed. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was at 4.47 percent, the same as late Wednesday. The dollar was lower against most other major currencies, while gold prices jumped.

Investors continued to place bets on the direction of interest rates. The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book, issued Wednesday, gave some investors pause after banking on a cut in the benchmark federal funds rate: The report suggested that while problems in the credit markets have exacerbated a housing market slump, the turmoil hasn’t damaged the broader economy. Stocks fell sharply, taking the Dow Jones industrials down more than 140 points.

Among the retailers to report August results Thursday, Wal-Mart said same-store sales, which measure business at stores open at least one year, rose 3.1 percent, while Target said same-store sales in August rose 6.1 percent.

The two biggest retailers beat Wall Street estimates. Wal-Mart rose 41 cents to $42.86, and Target rose 93 cents to $62.79.

Tony department store chain Saks Inc., teen apparel retailer Pacific Sunwear of California Inc. and children’s clothier The Children’s Place Retail Stores Inc. also topped analyst projections.

Though consumer spending still appears healthy, Wall Street remains worried about the troubled housing market.

Not only were investors worried about the rising foreclosure rate, but late Wednesday, mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. said it will cut another 900 jobs nationwide after eliminating about 500 positions last month. The nation’s largest mortgage lender by volume employs about 60,000 people.

Countrywide fell 70 cents, or 3.6 percent, to $18.11.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 4.48, or 0.57 percent, to 785.98.

Overseas, Japan’s Nikkei stock average rose 0.61 percent. In afternoon trading, Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.04 percent, Germany’s DAX index fell 0.21 percent, and France’s CAC-40 declined 0.27 percent.

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