British Airways is exiting the Dallas-Fort Worth market, at least for the summer season. American adds a fifth Dallas – London flight to compensate. BA is also dropping its second Miami – London flight, in favor of American.
Here’s why this actually makes a lot of sense, since the two carriers are part of an anti-trust immunized joint venture that lets them share revenue and coordinated schedules and pricing across the Atlantic.
- It makes sense for American Airlines to fly internationally from its hubs
- And it makes sense for American’s joint venture partners to fly internationally from their hub
DFW Airport
British Airways flies from London to most of the major cities in the U.S. that are not American Airlines hubs. American doesn’t fly Houston to London, BA does. That’s because American would have to position planes and crew to Houston in order to operate the flight, which is more expensive. For BA, their planes and crew are positioned at Heathrow.
British Airways Business Class
So leaving American’s largest hub to American to operate the London flights, operationally and from a cost standpoint, makes sense. They share revenue on the flights anyway and make adjustments for things like use of slots.
At the same time, this doesn’t make sense to do in every market. There is a loyal British Airways customer base in New York, for instance, and American doesn’t have the aircraft to fully displace BA in any case.
American And BA Terminal 8 At New York JFK
American and BA in New York
Focusing on London flying accomplishes another of American’s goals. They’ve shown an aversion to transatlantic (and transpacific) flying anywhere but joint venture hubs outside of summer seasonal Europe. This lets American hone its focus on BA’s London hub.
- BA is also short of aircraft. They announced last month, for instance, that they were putting off a return to Kuala Lumpur for this reason. Letting American take this flight frees up aircraft.
- And, though deliveries of new Boeing 787-9s have been delayed (production issues) and postponed (American’s desire not to fly long haul!), American has more widebodies than planned with delays in their Boeing 777-300ER retrofit program.
American Airlines Boeing 787
Between strategic objectives, aircraft availability, and cost having American take over Dallas – London flying just makes sense.
I flew first class on the BA A380 last summer DFW-LHR. After coming in on an AA domestic flight my transfer bag was misplaced and didn’t move for a week days despite many attempts to get help at both airlines and my AirTag telling me where it was. The A380 had broken parts and BA hadn’t loaded the FC bedding. I don’t think BA cared about this route and AA’s cooperation with BA at DFW was dysfunctional.
This actually makes sense…perhaps that tactic will allow AA to restore the one non-stop to LHR that they used to operate from PHX year round…it was paused from mid-October to mid April, largely because BA operates year round at the moment and AA needed the aircraft elsewhere. Now, if they could just figure out a way to move AA flights over to T5 at LHR, that would solve a number of problems.
Weird logic here
Yes of course it makes sense for BA to operate flights to US cities that are not AA hubs (e.g. IAH, SAN etc since obviously AA would have to position crew and aircraft to what are otherwise outstations.
But it makes no difference in a market like DFW LHR where either carrier has to layover crew on each end – and I’d argue that layover costs are far lower in DFW than LHR!
And AA does operate both BOS LHR and RDU LHR which are clearly non hub routes.
This is just AA supporting BA lift when AA has aircraft and BA does not since the profits flow the same way no matter the metal used.
Another useful analysis for those who try to make sense of AA/BA flying patterns. Thanks, Gary!
Get ready for one way business class redemptions for 350k and up each way
Roll eyes
I like your explanation of the switch to all AA. Sometimes it’s nice to fly the carrier of the country that one is flying to. Just saying…
This may partially explain why American is discontinuing the AA 90 morning Chicago-London flight, if there are not enough planes to go around.
Would be great to read a similar article explaining why Qantas does way more than 50% of the flying US-AU that AA and QF do. Is it because QF gives AA a bigger share of the revenue than BA?
@nc-retiree- AA90 is not a morning flight. It departs at 10:05 pm.
,@coutureguy AA 90 historically (more than last 30 years) has been the morning departure ORD-LHR. @nc-retiree is correct. No longer.