I broke the news yesterday that American Airlines would announce Dallas – Brisbane service. They are out with this and other new and restored routes this morning.
I wondered where the aircraft would be coming from and the good news is that the plan is for a new Boeing 787-9 to operate the route, with American’s brand new business class suites with doors. I cannot wait to try the product, along with new bedding and amenity kits and I am excited for more Australia service.
Credit: American Airlines
Credit: American Airlines
In addition, as I wrote to expect, American is adding Hawaii service: a second Dallas – Maui for the Christmas holidays and the return of daily seasonal Dallas – Kona.
They are also adding seasonal Dallas – Rio and expanding New York JFK’s seasonal Rio flight. Their LA – Auckland flight will re-start for winter earlier than planned.
Here’s the winter service additions:
| Origin | Destination | Details | Aircraft |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) | Brisbane, Australia (BNE) | New daily seasonal, eff. Oct. 27, 2024 | Boeing 787-9 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) | Kahului, Hawaii, (OGG) |
Restoring 2nd daily Dec. 19 – Jan 6 | Boeing 787-8 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) | Kona, Hawaii (KOA) | Returning daily seasonal, eff Oct. 27, 2024 | Boeing 787-8 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) | Rio de Janeiro (GIG) |
New daily seasonal, eff. Oct. 27, 2024 | Boeing 787-8 |
| New York JFK (JFK) | Rio de Janeiro (GIG) |
Expanded daily seasonal service, eff. Oct. 27, 2024 | Boeing 777-200 |
| Los Angeles (LAX) | Auckland, New Zealand (AKL) | Earlier seasonal restart, Dec. 5, 2024 | Boeing 787-9 |
American is also adding summer short-haul flying:
| Origin | Destination | Details | Aircraft |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) | Grand Cayman (GCM) | Expanded service, 2x Saturdays eff. June 8, 2024 |
Boeing 737 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) | Providenciales, Turks and Caicos (PLS) | Expanded service, 2x Saturdays eff. June 8, 2024 |
Boeing 737 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) | St. Thomas (STT) | Expanded service, 2x Saturdays eff. June 8, 2024 |
Airbus A319 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) | Veracruz, Mexico (VER) | New daily service, eff. June 12, 2024 |
Embraer E175 |
While there’s a better option if you’ll do a bit more onerous travel, a quick hop to Turks and Caicos makes for a nice trip and if you have Hyatt points to spend you can stay in a suite right on Grace Bay Beach.
Oddly, American’s tease included cherry blossoms and a clear focus on Japan. They’ve been awarded a slot to operate New York JFK – Tokyo Haneda. I expected that to be wrapped into this announcement as well. Perhaps, since that news was already out, it was less complicated not to mix two joint venture partners (Japan Airlines/Tokyo and Qantas/Australia) in the messaging.
Woo Hoo
American Eagle to Brisbane 😉 Seriously looks nice
How many miles one way? 80K or 400k ?
Lately I’ve been seeing domestic first class for 100K one way roll eyes
AA is the new Sky Pesos as of late
A couple things stand out w/ this announcement
1. DFW is one of the few AA hubs besides MIA where AA can sustain year round service to multiple cities and keep adding more and more flights. DFW is not the greatest hub geographically but it works well esp. in partnership with AA’s JV partners or to markets that are so large to offset the longer flight lengths compared to coastal gateways.
2. The South Pacific has become a pretty good place for the big 3 to add seasonal winter capacity perhaps a reflection of the length of lockdowns in NZ and AU and the ability of US carriers to quickly jump back into those markets.
3. AA will be the 2nd of the big 3 to have a business class suite w/ doors which also means that Polaris, despite the hype from many, will make UA the least competitive in terms of business class product on the top end. Unless AA moves pretty quickly to retrofit its 777-300ERs, it will be a few years before they have a fleet of more than a dozen while DL will hit 100 A330NEOs and A350s with Delta One Suites. But AA could have a sizable fleet of suites w/ doors in five years. AA generally moves fairly quickly through retrofits so probably has been careful to make sure they have the supply chain certainties before starting all of this retrofit work.
Unless ORD-HNL is coming separately, AA is favoring DFW for more Hawaii.
JFK-HND is awaiting final DOT approval and it was released as being tentatively approved.
Tim always finds a way to talk about delta in an article that doesn’t reference them at all. Who cares about delta 1 or their retrofits/ deliveries. If the article was on D1 or Delta at all I understand but I want to see you go one comment without bringing up Delta.
any idea when these will be loaded into their system the second AA DFW-OGG flight still doesn’t appear when searching over those dates
@Kevin Feb 5th I think.
I’m awaiting AA sticker shock
Who cares. The LAX AKL flight is loaded in and they are asking 333k miles for J.
The game is over. Collect your 2 points per $ with a Cap 1 card. That’s as good as it’s going to get.
@Timmy Delta
Don’t you know that Delta is the world’s only PERFECT airline? Therefore, it has to be part of every airline related conversation. LOL!
American Airlines taking luxury to new heights with their brand new business class on the Australia service! From the land down under to the friendly skies, passengers are in for an unforgettable experience. Cheers to American Airlines for setting the bar high and making long-haul travel a truly indulgent journey
once again, a couple thin-skinned people that are as emotionally attached to American and/or United as they are than their mother (probably moreso) can’t stand to see a comparison of airlines, esp. if it involves Delta even though the basis of discussion is on legitimate grounds.
One of the components of the highest standard of a business class seat now involves a door. That is not the only measure but it is one.
Delta made that leap years ago with the Delta One Suite on the A350 and the A330-900. Delta will have 100 aircraft with the Delta One Suite in a couple years.
UA and its internet crowd base has crowed endlessly about how great the Polaris seat is but Polaris does not have doors and UA is supposedly working on a version that will have them.
AA has also been working on putting a door on its business class product and it is finally here along w/ a larger business class product. United and Polaris is now the lagging product among US airlines now. Tough pill for some to swallow.
AA won’t take anywhere near as long to retrofit its aircraft with doors as UA took to put Polaris on its fleet.
Delta won’t put Delta One Suites on its entire fleet but if 100 out of a likely widebody fleet of 200 aircraft have it, Delta can easily deploy it where needed and where it will make money and use “lesser” aircraft like the 767 where the differential for business class is simply not as high
Even before the MTOW upgrade on the 787-9 that Boeing is working on, this will increase the range of the 787-9.
Once again, congrats to the AA and UA fan base for trashing a perfectly good day for AA’s route expansion because they can’t stand to see even the slightest competitive discussion take place.
Do you know if they will re instate the seasonal flight from Philadelphia to Glasgow, Scotland ?
@Tim Dunn “United and Polaris is now the lagging product among US airlines now”
United’s Polaris is *already* the lagging hard product. It was *designed to be*. The new seat was signed off on by Jeff Smisek as a ‘good enough’ option, that allowed them to keep the same number of seats across the same footprint that they’d used for 6-abreast Continental business class. The idea was that if they went full flat, direct aisle access it would be enough that people would stop proactively trying to avoid the product.
Now, the initial Polaris business class soft product was shockingly good. United had developed a number of ideas for service improvements. Oscar Munoz came on board and was trying to turn around the airline’s reputation with employees and with customers that had suffered under Smisek, who was ousted in a corruption probe. That’s when they did stroopwafels and Illy coffee. Then Munoz had medical problems and had to go on leave. His first big announcement coming back was Polaris. He greenlit everything. And the costs were astronomical… wine costs 4-5x budget for instance.
Kirby came in and began to get the costs of the Polaris product under control and that meant a lot of cutbacks. But United still had the best *bedding* of U.S. or European airlines and that pressured Delta and American to improve theirs.
Delta One Suites are better than current Polaris. But those suites are pretty narrow. The Thompson Vantage XL seat isn’t great. Whatever American puts out on Adient Ascent *should be* better, but I don’t put it past American to fail to pay attention to the details (like they did with the original Oasis cabin, where they didn’t even build a mockup and had to redo much of it). So we’ll see!
United, of course, has been working on their own new seat with doors.
thank you, Gary, but half or more of the items you list are not hard but rather soft product.
US airlines esp. love to invest in the hard product, roll out cabin enhancements, and then cheapen the soft product.
Given that labor has no say in the hard product – other than maintenance keeping it all working and FAs writing up problems when they happen – it is “safer” to invest in the hard product, which is a one-time investment.
As for your statement about tight footwells, that is a function of the width of the aircraft. The A330NEO is just a narrower plane than the B787 or A350 but the seat is still wide enough for the vast majority of people given the airplane flies a relatively small number of flights over 12 hours.
There are a few airlines like VS on their 787s that have less than industry standard 4 abreast in business class but not many. And the VS business class product leaves you out for all the world to see on top of being cumbersome to convert to a bed so every seat goes both ways.
And then when you get into measuring the width of various parts of a seat, it becomes subjective what is too little but the absence or presence of a door is a simple “yes” or “no”
Let’s see if UA adds to its $60 billion in capex by firming up and pulling forward its A350 order in order to pick up a few more A321NEOs and, in the process, introduce a new business class product.