British Airways is returning to Dallas-Fort Worth for summer 2026 with daily service and increasing Miami to double daily. They announced their exit from DFW a year ago, along with dropping its second Miami flight.
DFW Airport
The logic was that American and British Airways are part of an anti-trust immunized joint venture that lets them share revenue and coordinate schedules and pricing across the Atlantic, so:
- 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 International Terminal Gate
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.
London Heathrow Terminal 5
So leaving American’s largest hub to American to operate the London flights, operationally and from a cost standpoint, made 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.
And aircraft matter! British Airways has a lot of big planes with too many premium seats, so they can’t go on pure scheduling and crew efficiency. The planes need to go where people will buy those premium seats.
British Airways Airbus A350 Forward Business Class Cabin
Similarly, American Airlines hasn’t had enough widebody planes for long haul, since they retired too many (all of their Airbus A330s, Boeing 767s) during the pandemic – and weren’t able to take advantage of the big return of Europe flying that benefited United and Delta.
BA was also short of aircraft, so needed to pull back from some flying and support others less frequently than they’d have liked. Boeing has resumed deliveries. American is getting more widebodies (Boeing 787-9s) and retrofits of their Boeing 777-300ERs are delayed. So together they work through which carrier flies where.
Other changes they’ve announced for summer 2026:
- BA will move to year-round London Gatwick – Bangkok service, rather than winter only (but still non-daily – three times a week in summer and six times weekly in winter)
- They’re adding a fourth weekly London Gatwick – Kingston, Jamaica flight for summer.
- Las Vegas increases from 10 to 13 weekly flights from Heathrow. This is the archetypal BA flight as part of the American Airlines joint venture.
- Both San Diego and Austin will expand to full double daily for summer 2026. This is an additional one flight a week for each.
- The single London Gatwick to New York JFK flight will move to Heathrow, giving BA 9 daily flights between the airports. That’s in addition to the four offered by American.
- BA will upgrade Bahrain service from three times weekly to daily, and increase Jeddah to 5 weekly flights and both Riyadh and Doha to double daily.
British Airways at New York JFK
Ultimately, these adds along with BA’s return to Dallas-Fort Worth and expansion in Miami highlight how the joint venture with American balances efficiency with the need to place its most premium-heavy aircraft where customer demand is strongest, and the easing of widebody scarcity.
I’m confused – the title says they quit Dallas but they’re reversing course in 2026, but the article only explains why they quit. Are they coming back to Dallas or not (and when?)
Glad it’s not just me. I think the very first line of the article is missing some context. You’d have to click the link to see that BA is adding daily service back to DFW in 2026.
@bo — Based on the link in the article, they will be returning to DFW (and MIA) in the summer of 2026.
Unless American significantly improves the quality of wine served, I’ll consistently avoid flying them and book BA. I also avoid Iberia because their Cava is undrinkable.
I suspect they had enough customers that said they don’t want to fly AA.
let’s see what DL does with JFK-LGW but that route might end for all carriers.
so much for the notion that foreigner travelers aren’t coming to the US anymore; double daily to LAS seems like a pretty steady stream of Brits are still coming to LAS. other routes might have more balance in UK vs US passengers but LAS is heavily UK originating.
@Tim Dunn — Inbound international tourism (foreign tourists visiting the USA) is indeed still down; so, perhaps, any additions are merely to meet the demand of Americans fleeing… *wink*
They are not reversing course,the plan all along was to return this fall,actually it starts back up on Oct 26th operated with a A350,they let AA pick up the extra flight this summer do to BS shortage of widebody of aircraft
The issue with BA is they do not honor AA status like for bags or for upgrades. BA also does not let admiral club members into their lounges
Agree. It was a pause not a “quit” and like others if flying economy or prem economy, I’ll connect and catch a BA flight over AA. Also prefer an A350 or A380 if possible.
As for business, everyone can agree, the seats and IFE on many AA wide bodies are worn and tired. Service is meh or at least inconsistent on AA, but generally friendlier on BA. Still beats the back but still rate as last among legacy carriers. And AA is certainly experiencing some reliability issues with their new 787Ps.
in aggregate, yes, 1990, but that is heavily skewed by Canadians.
The irony of the AC strike is that thousands of US passengers got to fly home on US airlines over the past year after booking on AC. even more Canadians crossed the border to fly from the US when their AC flights were no longer operating. the hubs of SEA and DTW both saw huge increases in the amount of traffic as well as non-hub cities including upstate NY.
you know what they say about karma.
@Tim Dunn — The short-lived AC incident is an outlier and won’t affect numbers much; it’s not just Canadians, it’s Europeans and others who have decided to travel elsewhere or just stay home, in-part due to the performative hostilities and also in-part due to the very real macroeconomic threats, also caused by this guy’s wealth-killing policies. Time will tell, and I’m not sure the ‘karma’ suggests what you think it does…
Are they putting a refurbed A380 back on the DFW route, or something else? Choosing between AA and BA is a bit of a zero-sum game, but I’ll always go with BA since the cabin crew tends to be better (less angry with the world), and I still have a soft spot for them.
@Tomri why would BA recognize Admirals Club? That’s entirely an AA thing, nothing to do with OneWorld status. I agree, it would be great if AA just used OW status for lounge access, but it’ll never happen, they make too much money from domestic flyers with Admirals Club memberships.
1990,
of course strikes are short-lived but AC has built its strategy for years on siphoning off US passengers which has offset the dropoff in local US-Canada passengers. Many of those Americans were able to fly home on US airlines rather than connecting in Canada. That IS karma.
Let’s live w/ data; foreigners, esp. Canadians, may be traveling less to the US but Americans are traveling more. The fact that AA is expanding its TATL network and DL is set to do the same and UA will undoubtedly as well even as DL continues to grow across the Pacific says global travel is holding out quite well regardless of how it breaks down by nationality of travelers.