American Airlines Will Announce 5 New International Destinations Tomorrow

by Gary Leff

American Airlines will announce 5 new international routes on Thursday. They’re promoting an announcement on social media. Ishrion Aviation is reporting that they will cover departures from Dallas, Philadelphia, and Chicago, and there hints about what these routes will be. This appears to be revealed by the boarding passes in the promotional video.

The imminent announcement of new routes was predicted last week by aviation watchdog JonNYC.

American Airlines retired too many planes during the pandemic that could fly long distances (their Boeing 757s, 767s, and Airbus A330 fleets) and Boeing has faced delays delivering new aircraft. So JonNYC says the current thinking at American is that any new route needs to be accomplished with a single plane. Roughly speaking that means flights no longer than 10 hours.

JonNYC anticipated the announcement would be heavy Philadelphia, with Chicago O’Hare thrown in, and that there’d be a focus on “ow-premium 787-8 vacation routes, Eastern Europe. + one possible wild card.” American’s 787-8s don’t have enough business class seats, so need to be mass market leisure-focused.

There are (3) new routes from Philadelphia. With the end of American’s focus on New York for transatlantic flying, focus shifts to Philadelphia which hasn’t been built back since the pandemic. Already American has moved their Doha flight from New York to Philly (starting at the end of October).

Chicago O’Hare has largely been ceded to United, and there’s very little Chicago – International at this point. Somewhere classic may mean a restored destination, rather than a ‘classic city’ as such. Although Jon says to expect at least something that is “completely new.”

Meanwhile Dallas should be to somewhere hot, as in.. hotter than Dallas?

Even though they’re getting back slots from JetBlue in New York, American’s strategy has shifted away from New York without the Northeast Alliance. They don’t yet have a strategy there (the Northeast Alliance, struck down by a district court judge, ‘was plan B’ and they ‘don’t have a plan C’).

They believed they lost money in New York prior to current management taking over. They tried scheduling flights to serve New York as a destination for other markets (rather than focusing on the New York market). They tried a scaled-down New York as a ’boutique operation’ to partner hubs and premium cross country markets. But those did not ‘work’ – though as they learned, being relevant to New Yorkers means more credit card signups and more New York spend, which they sorely need.

So New York is a place they’ll be squatting on slots in for awhile, for instance they’ve announced the planned resumption of Boston flying, not a place they’ll be adding international long haul destinations beyond their own hubs to.

Here’s some specific speculation on what routes American will announce.

Before the pandemic American planned to connect up with Royal Air Maroc from Philadelphia using a Boeing 757. Could they try Morocco again with a Boeing 787-8? Perhaps we’ll just see summer seasonal Europe from Philly. I’m curious what they have in store.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. My guess is Istanbul is one of the locations. Got a family there now (last time she flew TK from ORD to IST) and she says Istanbul is “hopping” like she has never seen it before, and she’s been living there off and on for the past 10 years.

  2. Guess this means the Flagship lounge @ PHL that’s been taking 4 years to build will finally open up!!!

  5. If Italy is one destination as Jon thinks, is Milan considered “glitzy”?
    CPH is a possibility for a “new” destination. (Milan would be a resumption.)

  7. I read in an article that United will begin new service to Palermo, Sicily next summer from EWR. Could it be that maybe AA wants to compete and maybe begin service to Catania, Sicily next summer?? I mean, I would love that

  9. My call

    PHL -MXP
    ORD – AMM
    PHL – CMN (reannounced)
    PHL – Scandinavia
    DFW – Cairo????? Istanbul??? DUBAI????

    Would love PHL to Tokyo or South America, but doubt it

  10. Since Malev Air closed down, American has been in-and-out of Budapest Hungary multiple times. I’m guessing they’ll make a return engagement.

  11. @OCTinPHL – AA serves Milan (MXP) currently. So it’s not Milan and it wouldn’t be a resumption.

  13. I’m more intrigued by the piece in The Independent naming you and Ben, amongst a few others, as contributors to increasing carbon footprint and climate change by encouraging the game of miles. It actually had some meat to it and was interesting.

  14. My guess and hope is Casablanca Morocco since Royal air Maroc is in one world and Morocco’s tourism is doing great and looking very good in the future since the Atlas lions made it to the semis in WC soccer in Qatar.Morocco became of the top destinations in the world with a quick six and half flight from the east

  15. I’d say IST is a candidate, Turkish Airlines has penetrated to all AA bases and taking away big chunks of the cake, except PHL.. no competition from PHL to Istanbul. Huge Turkish community in Philadelphia and South Jersey, makes huge sense..

  16. They should have run a similar teaser for today with which routes they’re killing off to facilitate the new ones. I remember when AA killed off service to a city from my home airport without any public announcement, which would have made the service reduction a lot more palatable.

  20. Well rumor has it 1 will be LAX-Singapore on 777-300 starting in December.. but won’t believe anything til it’s in reservations even then AA incredibly famous for starting a new destination then stopping it in 3 months

  23. Lax- Singapore
    Lax-Auckland will be year round instead of last 3 months of year..
    Also in the mix
    Brisbane
    Morocco
    Christchurch
    Also rumor their bring 330’s out of retirement but agree with patti rather NEVER fly again then step one foot in fricken CLT!

  24. USAir used to do PHL-ARN. AA used to do a different US-ARN route. I would expect maybe another ARN run.

    Would AA do CPH? Not sure it makes much sense given all the routes from CPH to the US done by other carriers. OSL? Well, if they manage to codeshare with operator feed from a Norwegian carrier, maybe that makes more sense than CPH.

  25. Stuart,

    Shouldn’t they have named Flyertalk? That is the sight that ran up the audience for mileage/status runs.

  26. Interesting choice of actor to kick off the video. Woke & PC. Wouldn’t be seeing an ad like this in 2002…

  27. Won’t be Canada as the government regulations there are making it much more expensive to fly when there is any sort of disruption to a flight.

  28. Some clues seem to conflict with each other, but here are some guesses.

    1st flight: Stickers show NYC and a French flag w/Eiffel tower. Maybe NCE as mentioned already. I guess Cannes is glitzy.

    2nd PHL to somewhere new shows a decorated plane sticker. Part of it looks like the Croatian flag (red white blue striped with a crest). PHL-DBV was flown before, so if that’s not technically new then maybe Split as a cruise port destination.

    3rd Somewhere fun shows a sticker with Spain and Switzerland. Maybe there’s demand for Tenerife. Ibiza is fun but small. Or else there’s a Swiss fun winter destination.

    4th ticket reads PZA / PHL which is Pisa. The sticker is an Italian flag with the tower.

    5th ticket is ORD somewhere classic. The sticker reads, airport approved 21.05.1937. A search says that’s the date of Amelia Earhart’s flight, so likely Hawaii.

    Maybe 22,391 is the total mileage.

  29. Pl one of them have to be to Budapest.From NYC or from Philadelphia. No Airlines flying between USA and Hungary.

  31. In news from my area, Enrique Alfaro, Governor of the state of Jalisco has returned from his trip to Europe and announced that direct flights from Rome, Paris and Madrid will be serving Puerto Vallarta in the very near future. He also mentioned that Barcelona was also a strong possibility, but the latter three cities were definite and is confident will bolster tourism between the Europe and the west coast of Mexico.

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