American Airlines will announce new Chicago – Tokyo service on Wednesday along with other routes as part of a pep rally and discussion with the carrier’s employees at O’Hare airport. Aviation watchdog JonNYC reports:
AA at ORD pic.twitter.com/ZqszY3h6sR
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) June 30, 2026
Join us for two can’t-miss moments:
🎉 Big reveal and pep rally
10 a.m. | H/K ConcourseBe the first to hear big news for the hub — revealed live by Robert — before a fun event in the terminal with giveaways, live entertainment, photo ops and more for our team and customers.
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) June 30, 2026
- Update: American indeed announced Chicago O’Hare – Tokyo Narita starting March 27, 2027 using a (non-premium) Boeing 787-9.
American Airlines teased an image to promote a new route. It’s Osaka Garden in Chicago. That almost makes it seem like the plan is to announce Chicago – Osaka but this appears in the hint to just represent ‘Japan’ rather than Osaka specifically, because I’m confident in the sourcing on Tokyo Narita.
JonNYC also says to expect Chicago O’Hare – Ontario, California to be announced.
and then something random like Ontario
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) July 1, 2026
United Airlines has tried to push American out of its hub at O’Hare, but American pushed back and even won back 3 gates there next year after rebuilding its schedule and buying two gates from Spirit. They’re even investing in a new larger satellite Admirals Club.
Tokyo Skyline
Takashi Ono at Jiro Roppongi
The airline had neglected O’Hare coming out of the pandemic. They were constrained, having retired too many planes, they couldn’t rebuild everywhere. And they’ve been especially constrained on long haul aircraft since they retired their Airbus A330s and Boeing 767s and Boeing faced challenges delivering new Boeing 787s.
American Airlines Boeing 787-8 At Chicago O’Hare
In January American declared Chicago to be an existential fight at their ‘State of the Airline’ for employees and declared United their ‘common enemy.’ It’s certainly a crucial market for spending on their Citibank cobrand credit cards which are the primary driver of profit, and they’ve fallen behind in New York and Los Angeles.
But the airline has been improving markedly, just needing to tie it all together with a premium identity and vision – so getting the CEO out in front of employees like this to sell a vision for the future is crucial.
Chicago O’Hare
The last time that American flew to Asia from Chicago, the flights themselves bled money. Worst were their China flights but that was before the pandemic, China was seen as an important market for the future and they felt the need to ‘squat’ route authorities that would make money later. They may have lost as much as $100 million on that service.
But Asia is now doing much better, in part because there’s so much less China flying (Chinese airlines were flying absurd routes to squat markets themselves, and selling connections throughout Asia cheap to fill the planes). And American has a joint venture with Japan Airlines so they’ll have connecting traffic on both ends of this route.
American Airlines at Chicago O’Hare
Narita Express Train
Chicago – Tokyo has been one of the better flights for award space on Japan Airlines, although not as much recently since Japan Airlines became a points transfer partner with Capital One and Bilt. There’s been far more demand for their awards, and they’ve been much tighter in releasing space. More capacity is welcome!
Here’s hoping YOW is part of the announcement to return to Canadas capital.
HND routes are all taken so HND is only possible if the DOT starts doing some horsetrading which they weren’t willing to do when DL tried to swap some routes.
If AA is starting ORD-NRT, they are likely replacing JL which already flies it.
KIX is possible but that would be a bigger risk than even NRT.
either way, it is good to see AA returning to Chicago-Asia.
it is also worth noting that DL serves 2 cities in Asia from MSP and 3 from DTW; it is hard to believe that UA, the ony US carrier with service from ORD to Asia, only serves Tokyo.
and AA still loses money flying to Asia – and has for 10 years regardless of whether Japan is stronger than it has been in years (the Yen is weak which helps US tourism to Japan). those that don’t think DOT data is telling the truth should tell us where AA can reallocate profits; their domestic profit was only 2X as profitable as their TPAC loss so there isn’t much “flesh” to reallocate to Asia.
Timbits: I know this is a personal anecdote and not one of the myriad datasets that you use to spread your manure like your favorite airline back in the day, but on Monday, I boarded from the gate next door to JL’s NRT flight, and that flight easily filled the 787-9 that flew it. There is demand.
I don’t give a rat’s regarding LAX, MSP, DTW, or any other airport that DL infests with its evil. I care about my airport, where DL is an irrelevance and will continue to be an irrelevance despite wasting money on that LAX flight, and the airlines I fly (and the ones they have joint ventures with). Thus, ORD-NRT or ORD-KIX on AA, where I have my points, are important and welcome. I don’t care if AA is losing money and I certainly don’t care about DL, because I will never fly them again. I just know that if I need to fly to Japan, I can get there and get where I need to go.
Respectu! If true, this is awesome. More options between US-JP is always welcome!
thanks for the useless and unrelated Delta info, sTD.
you have a mental health issue lol
“those that don’t think DOT data is telling the truth should tell us where AA can reallocate profits;”
you really are an idiot. The issue isn’t that DOT is “wrong” it’s that results between carriers aren’t standardized so saying UA is xx more profitable than DL in Asia is pretty useless.
Per my usual example to you, Take something like LAS-HND with each ticket costing $800 in economy.
If Delta flew the route, they’d likely route you LAS-SEA-HND; they could allocate $500 to LAS-SEA which would make SEA-HND worth $300.
If united flew the route, they’d likely route you LAS-SFO-HND. United could allocate $200 which SFO-HND allocated $600.
Is United making twice as much revenue to HND in this example? If you asked the DOT in this extreme example, yes. The absolute profitability of carriers in the DOT data is obviously good but there isn’t a standard to compare.
You really need to learn this basic info, sTD. But obviously, I truly doubt AA is profitable to Asia given their overall P&L.
*If united flew the route, they’d likely route you LAS-SFO-HND. United could allocate $200 to LAS-SFO with SFO-HND allocated $600.
Here’s hoping that PHX – Tokyo is in the future mix (Starlux / China Airlines flight to Taiwan doing very well) and MIA. AA is successful with it’s JV with JAL and DFW, LAX and now JFK do great on the route. Just like going to Europe on BA/AA and then transferring in LHR, happy to do a one stop to Asia via Tokyo.
It’s pretty sad when AA is “celebrating” its progress towards returning to 2029.
It is about time Robert Isom is going to a field location to meet with employees after flight attendants and pilots have no confidence in him. I wish him good luck at the ORD “pep rally”.
Just more lies from Timmy, just look at the DOT data, JAL does fine on ORD-NRT. Tim doesn’t like data – or he will scope this to Tuesday morning flights in November, JAL underperforms and that is why NRT will fail.
Since I’ve never been the CEO of an airline, I don’t have the expertise to state, as a matter of irrefutable fact, that an airline retired too many aircraft or made other mistakes in the past. We’re all entitled to our opinions, but it’s another thing to invent our own facts. A case in point: Delta also retired quite a few frames during the pandemic, and is apparently doing quite well financially in spite of it.
An opinion: It’s quite possible that many of American’s financial and overall performance issues lie with issues this blog doesn’t repeatedly whine and moan about. Although, in fairness, they may very well be contributing factors.
But to the point of the piece, I think if American wants to challenge United in Chicago, a non-stop destination to consider might be Sao Paulo. If I’m not mistaken, United is the only airline flying that route, and American is relatively strong in Brazil. Again, since I’ve never been the CEO of an airline, I could be mistaken.
Ghost,
well said. it would seem that GRU would be an obvious direct route that AA could launch to challenge UA from ORD.
as for max and others, the data comes from airlines and is supplied to the DOT; there are industry standard proration formulas and even if an airline does something different, they are not going to allocate costs in one way and revenue in another.
and the point still remains that the sum of any of the big 3’s 3 global systems plus domestic have to amount to the same number – and that bottom line number is not that much different between DOT and SEC data.
Max and others that protest can tell us where they believe AA should reduce their profits in order to make TPAC profitable but they can’t argue that they don’t like the result so it should all be ignored.
and there is a good chance that Tokyo does make money for AA – but they also fly to China and Seoul so perhaps that is what they need to cut if they want to make money.
I don’t have O’Hare 2nd’s unexplained deep dislike of Delta because as he said, DL is pretty much irrelevant @ ORD. I might have dropped them when they dropped the NRA but I didn’t have relationship to drop. On the other hand, I have flown American across the Pacific & the memory fosters bad dreams.
American has been suckered into a money losing attempt to take on United in ORD. For all the operational problems they have Isom keeps coming up with pie in the sky remedies cloaked in a “win back the business traveler” charade. Both vividly demonstrate how misguided he and his C-Suite gang is.