The official end of the Northern Hemisphere summer this year is Sunday, September 22. Airline summer traditionally runs through Labor Day. But American Airlines has ended its summer. As aviation watchdog JonNYC explains, American Airlines is beginning to rotate planes out of service.
Summer is peak travel, and that means airlines get ready. They make sure that maintenance is done on their aircraft, and it’s all hands on deck. Then when summer is over, they don’t need as many planes in service and more can return to maintenance. That means periodic heavy checks, and it also means reconfigurations. They can have more planes out at the same time, and they can be out longer.
American Airlines has started that process.
the scheduled aircraft in heavy maintenance goes up about a dozen overnight.
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) August 6, 2024
The reason for this is simple. Earlier school year starts have shortened American’s summer season. Some Texas schools actually started this week! Many start next week. This is actually common across the Sun Belt where American has focused.
Growing up in New York the start of school was always the day after Labor Day, so my mind can barely comprehend this. But school’s back in some places, which means families aren’t traveling as much, and American expected air travel to begin to quiet earlier as a result.
They must know that their equipment really needs the maintenance.
Delta needs heavy IT maintenance also .
In a lot of Europe, August is the main part of summer vacations, and the season doesn’t even seem to really start until July.
The reason why schools in the South start earlier than schools in the North is a historical anomaly for when farming was a much bigger part of the lives of residents. Given that it’s the South, the growing season starts earlier, and kids were needed to work the fields!
My grandfather grew up in rural Tennessee. If it was an especially warm spring, he would be pulled out of school a few days early to work the fields (and it was common in this area during WWII).
Fun little fact!
This is the reason why BCN has been cut from JFK to seasonal, possibly temporarily, and won’t return until March 2025, and JFK-ATH ends abruptly in early September, and not at the end of October as has been the case. The 77Ws are going to start cycling into mods, the 77Es also need heavy maintenance, and presumably, the 787-8s and some -9s do as well.
Also, the second daily JFK-FCO (AA 246/245) has ended on Sunday.
AA is discounting aggressively to fill the seats they are selling including over the Pacific – which is being cut far less than to Europe.
AA is going to reconfigure airplanes because they continually look to fleet to solve their inability to sell decent fares in the international marketplace.
With the company yet to provide a price tag for the new flight attendant contract, all of these aircraft mods on top of the FA contract are going to cost AA hundreds of millions of dollars they don’t have.
Finally, AA has cancelled over 1500 flights over the past 3 days with a large chunk of the cancellations coming from CLT, AA’s most overscheduled hub which does not function during IROPs anywhere in the country.
DL and UA each cancelled about 300 flights over the same period.
All of the revenue that AA might have sold doesn’t matter if they cancel such a high percentage of their network on a regular basis.
And despite the fixation w/ DL’s IT meltdown, DL has cancelled fewer flights year to date than AA or UA – even though DL operates a larger mainline network than AA or UA.
DL’s IT meltdown is behind them; AA will continue to bleed revenue because of its inability to operate reliably.
@Professor of Points
I grew up in rural Tennessee in the 60s and 70s. By then we were on the same schedule as most of the northern schools. School usually started the last week of August or first week of September and let out in late May. Somebody came up with a study, the kids weren’t retaining as much over the long summer break. By the time my daughter had gotten in school they had switched to starting earlier and going later, but added in long break for fall and spring. Now the debate has switched back to starting later due to the energy cost of cooling the schools for the month of August although they haven’t done anything yet.
@Tim Dunn
Why don’t you quit worrying about AA and figure out a way that Delta will reimburse people for their expenses. Go to the other forums and see where they’re rejecting legitimate claims or are only paying 10 to 20%. Hey Debby come in 100 miles west Delta would be in the exact same shape as AA. The IT failure showed Delta is no better than the other airlines.
@Tim Dunn,
Your point of view is as usual, obtuse, and foolish. In the past 2 weeks, DL has shown it is little more than America’s Ryanair. Possibly worse. Premium airline? Get real. When Southwest has better IT than DL, you know all is not well at the widget.
This is hardly new. I could pull a box full of OAG’s (Official Airline Guides) and/or printed, systemwide, airline timetables (including/especially American’s) that consistently shows a fairly large early/mid-August schedule change going back decades.
Yes, the August schedule change is not a large as the early September changes typically are, but it’s still fairly substantial and, as noted, has been going on for decades.
@Tim Dunn
Nevermind the fact a hurricane/tropiclal storm has been moving thru FL,SC, and NC for the last few days.
Could you also imagine how dirty the inside seats are
Bad weather happens during the summer and winter. It is not unforeseen. AA’s CLT hub melts down more days than not
And as hard as it is for some to accept, Delta has cancelled fewer flights than AA and UA year to date.
Forums of any kind are not reality on any subject
AA cannot run a reliable operation regardless of the weather and high value customers know it.
Premium is defined by what customers pay for a product. Based on the most current and expected future data, Delta still gets more per seat mile for its aero than any other YS airline
Delta is also upgrading its crew scheduling software from ColecoVision to the Commodore 64 and moving to premium 1200 baud Hayes modems for failover testing.
Kids have been back in school in the Phoenix area since mid-July!
Tim Fun, we hold Delta to higher standards. We do that because and others have bragged abt that time and time again.
First, we had astronomical summer. Then, we had meteorological summer. Now, apparently, we have aeronautical summer! 😉
For a premium and thoughtful flight from JFK, please consider Delta as your travel partner.
AA is not getting the revenue like Delta and United, so it makes sense to end early.
I am excited to see how the new refurbished / premium-heavy reconfigured format for the 77W’s will look.
IF THEY SAY THEY DO NOT MAKE MONEY ON SUMMER TIME WITH THOUSAND OF FLIES ,HOW THEY ARE MAKING MONEY WINTER TIME WITH ONLY FEW FLIES ????any guess ???
Tim Dunn. Please note United had thousands of max cancellations in Jan and feb
AA on the Starbucks PSL calendar
@Captian Freedom
I loved ColecoVision.
Tim bad mouths AA more than he fellates Delta. You’d think an AA pilot banged his wife. Tim is autistic.
TIM DUNN.
YOU TRULLY ARE SO WRONG IN SO MANY WAYS!
HOW MUCH DOES DELTA PAY YOU?
TIM YOUR SO “PREMIUM”
LOL
Weather happens ALL the time. Just as it did in Texas in May which negatively impacted AA, UA and WN – all of which have large Texas operations -while DL does not.
AA cannot operate reliably in poor weather when other airlines can.
So far today, AA has cancelled far more flights than any other large jet US airline – 5X more than DL has cancelled
UA bought MAXs and tied its growth plan to them. I’m not sure why UA should be excused for its MAX cancellations but DL should be hung over using CrowdStrike software. It it comes down to poor quality vendors, there is nothing any different between Boeing and CrowdStrike.
And DL still has cancelled fewer flights than AA or UA year to date even though DL runs a larger mainline operation.
Yes, Delta had a terrible screw up caused by an outside company. The facts prove Tim right whether you like him or not. I’d still fly with Delta due to their consistency. People seem to hate that Delta is better. Really.
I think this is where UA has had the Advantage with different sized planes as opposed to DL and AA commitments to all 75 seat planes.
They are able to send the larger planes in for the peak periods of a market but then send the smaller 50 seaters in when the demand is low.
You see many of their markets have that supply and demand curve through out the day.
@guflyer. French schools let out in late June or early July and start the new school year in early September. The French are either Juilletistes or Aoûtiens, depending on weather they vacation in July or August. And, of course, being French the other side is always wrong.
@Gary, I was always told the tradition (in the North at least) was to delay the start of school until after Labor Day so the kids could work harvest in our agrarian days.
Cr- is a Tim dummy account.
No we don’t hate Delta. We hate that people like you consistently come to message boards and sound like AI repeating the same lines.
Tim, there’s a HURRICANE that blocked the ENTIRE part of Northern FL. And is now hitting Charlotte. And a storm in LGA. Delta has magic planes and pilots that can go through those? No, they cancelled as well. I was on one of them. But Delta just proved that they can’t handle a meltdown. Weather is not IT. Weather physically prevents planes from departing.
I am genuinely tired of your BS. You really cannot have an honest conversation. The fact that you drop the word PREMIUM so often leads me to believe you are a bot, a troll, or not all there. Deltas FC is an inferior product. Meals are trash. Planes are old, musty even.
Delta delayed 21% of their flights today. American 22%. What’s deltas excuse?
Interesting, sitting here at DFW and it still feels like summer. Heat index 108.
@Cr-
I don’t think it’s that people hate that Delta is better. I’ve got tickets booked with them right now. It’s the silly notion that there is a premium airline in the US. We don’t have one ranked in the top 20. If you want premium you’ll have to fly one of the Asian or Middle Eastern airlines. In the US we’re left to try and pick up a turd by the cleanest end.
I was on 2 American A320s recently in need of a total gut job inside. The cabins were held together with duct tape, and on one my would-be flip out cup holder had not one but THREE layers of differing tapes covering it up. The first layer had accumulated an ungodly amount of grime around it suggesting it had been on there quite a while. Half the seats in first couldn’t stay in the upright position that that one either. The landing gear on both made some ungodly (but very different from each other) noises I’ve never heard on any plane. The sad part is both planes were only 12 years old.
H2,
you clearly don’t grasp that “premium” is defined by what customers pay for service.
Delta has long gotten more revenue per seat mile than any other US airline and, as much as some want to hope for a different outcome, that is not likely to change.
People’s perception of what is premium and what is not is in their mind while real financial metrics tell the real story.
The reason why so many AA and UA fans reject DL’s categorization as premium is because AA and UA can’t and won’t generate the same amount of revenue per seat mile.