American’s New Hong Kong Route Will Be Bookable March 20!

by Gary Leff

Early this morning American Airlines had accidentally posted on their website the launch of new Los Angeles – Hong Kong service, which I’ve been expecting since November or December. They promptly pulled the announcement down, however American confirmed the news for me.

American has focused on Los Angeles for building up its Pacific route network. They recently added a Sydney flight (with an improved inflight service). They’re adding Auckland, New Zealand. And they’re adding Tokyo Haneda service. And those are all international routes that face competition.

Now they’ve formally announced the Los Angeles – Hong Kong flight, and provided details.

    Los Angeles – Hong Kong, 1:55 a.m. – 8:10 a.m.+1
    Hong Kong – Los Angeles, 8:20 p.m. – 6:40 p.m.

The aircraft will be a Boeing 777-300ER, which has a fantastic business class seat, a first class cabin, and which offers inflight internet.

The flights will be bookable March 20 for travel September 7 onward.

With this schedule, and using the same aircraft type they already fly to Hong Kong, their Dallas flight arrives in Hong Kong at 6 p.m. and can turn around and fly to Los Angeles at 8:20 p.m. instead of overnighting the aircraft. Meanwhile the Los Angeles – flight arrives in Hong Kong and then returns to Dallas 6 hours later. They add a Los Angeles roundtrip with only one additional Boeing 777-300ER.

American’s press release adds that this new flight is operated as part of their revenue-sharing joint venture with Japan Airlines, which is interesting of course because it competes directly with oneworld partner Cathay Pacific (which is not a joint venture partner).

Here’s the video they’re distributing with their release about the flight:


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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Comments

  2. So will there be seat availability under the old chart which is good until March 21?

  4. I’m not crazy about arriving in HK at 8:10 am but I love the late night return flight! This is a real game changer for AA to Asia. United has been dominating this market through SFO and now they’re going lose a ton of LAX-HKG business. Years ago United flight 1 & 2 were non stop between LAX and HKG and they eliminated them. It will be interesting to see if United fights back with an LAX-HKG non stop. I would love to see the competition heat up in this market! There is a ton of traffic between Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

  5. I think I just wet my pants. What a dream come true!!! Hopefully AA will have some < $500 roundtrip fares like they regularly do for DFW.

  6. OMFG!! A new route West Coast to Hong Kong.

    Guess it shows how weak AA’s route network is that such a basic route is cause for excitement.

  7. Any news or thoughts about now finally being able to use the pacific route on an award to India on AA/CX?

  8. I just did a search on current fares on AA HKG-LAX via Tokyo and the cheapest restricted fare is around $31k HKD. The cheapest CX fare is $48k.

    Not sure who would pay for these J pricing, when I can get 8-12 trips in econ.

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