American Airlines has added 7 new winter routes:
Los Angeles – Memphis 18DEC19 – 06JAN20 1 daily A319
New York LaGuardia – Key West eff 21DEC19 1 weekly Embraer E175 (Mesa Airlines)
Phoenix – Cedar Rapids eff 18DEC19 1 daily CR900 (Mesa Airlines)
Phoenix – Fort Lauderdale 18DEC19 – 06JAN20 1 daily A321 (Service resumption since June 2016)
Phoenix – New Orleans eff 18DEC19 1 daily A319
Phoenix – Wichita 18DEC19 – 06MAY20 1 daily CRJ900 (Mesa Airlines)
Washington Reagan – NW Florida Beaches eff 07JAN20 1 daily CRJ (PSA Airlines)
Once-weekly Saturday service out of LaGuardia is easy, the airport isn’t at peak weekday capacity and it’s how airlines often do pure leisure routes.
Delta flies Los Angeles – Memphis six times weekly, and Allegiant flies it twice. I’d think this is a route American should be able to make work beyond just winter holiday travel though American, Delta, and Southwest all service Nashville which is the better market.
It’s good to see the restoration of service to (really through) Phoenix, Fort Lauderdale should work (at least seasonally though this is year-round).
I never think of Panama City as “Northwest Florida Beaches.” Unlike the strange story of how Baltimore’s BAL airport was able to acquire the 3 letter code BWI, Northwest Florida Beaches wasn’t able to acquire their desired TFB (“The Florida Beaches”) but ultimately settled on ECP – getting support from Southwest Airlines as Everyone Can Party. I always think of American’s focus city at Cancun as ‘Everyone Can Party’.
There are 6 new summer routes as well,
Chicago O’Hare – Anchorage eff 07MAY20 1 daily 737-800 (Service resumption since summer 2011 season)
Chicago O’Hare – Fairbanks eff 07MAY20 1 daily 737-800
Dallas/Ft. Worth – Fairbanks eff 07MAY20 1 daily A321
New York LaGuardia – Bozeman eff 06JUN20 1 weekly 737-800
New York LaGuardia – Kalispell eff 06JUN20 1 weekly 737-800
Philadelphia – Bozeman eff 06JUN20 1 weekly 737-800
American is growing Anchorage service though my understanding is that the current Phoenix – Anchorage flight doesn’t do as well as Dallas. They’re also growing in Alaska with service from both Dallas and Chicago to Fairbanks. Meanwhile Bozeman gets two once weekly flights, from both New York LaGuardia and Philadelphia.
It looks like DL is going head-to-head with AA on LGA-BZN with basically the same schedule (8am departure vs. AA’s 11:15am) starting on 6/27/20 with an A320. Not only that, many of DL’s flights are half the cost of AA.
This was all announced a few weeks/ months ago. Why are you only mentioning it now? Slow news day? Need some clicks?
Any idea why LAX-MEM? Feeder service for Pacific flights? It just seems kind of an oddball.
Perhaps it was intended to be a refresher
I am a bit skeptical about the story involving a conference call between IATA, DOT and Southwest. IATA has a very firm policy of not DIRECTLY negotiating with airport authorities and governments over the allocation of new airport codes (probably because its easier to say nothing than to say “no” to a preferred airport code) – the intermediary/sponsor of the code has to be an airline operator intending to fly to the airport. Free for IATA member airlines, but chargeable for non-members.
I know this because I got dragged into one of these allocation kerfuffles just a few weeks ago and eventually had to “sponsor” the new code as the IATA member airline on behalf of the Government and airport operator.