British Airways is with daily service and increasing Miami to double daily. They announced their exit from DFW a year ago, along with dropping its second Miami flight.

DFW Airport

The logic was that American and British Airways are part of an anti-trust immunized joint venture that lets them share revenue and coordinate schedules and pricing across the Atlantic, so:

• It makes sense for American Airlines to fly internationally from its hubs
  
• And it makes sense for American’s joint venture partners to fly internationally from their hub

DFW International Terminal Gate

British Airways flies from London to most of the major cities in the U.S. that are not American Airlines hubs. American doesn’t fly Houston to London, BA does. That’s because American would have to position planes and crew to Houston in order to operate the flight, which is more expensive. For BA, their planes and crew are positioned at Heathrow.

London Heathrow Terminal 5

So leaving American’s largest hub to American to operate the London flights, operationally and from a cost standpoint, made sense. They share revenue on the flights anyway and make adjustments for things like use of slots.

At the same time, this doesn’t make sense to do in every market. There is a loyal British Airways customer base in New York, for instance, and American doesn’t have the aircraft to fully displace BA in any case.

And aircraft matter! British Airways has a lot of big planes with too many premium seats, so they can’t go on pure scheduling and crew efficiency. The planes need to go where people will buy those premium seats.

British Airways Airbus A350 Forward Business Class Cabin

Similarly, American Airlines hasn’t had enough widebody planes for long haul, since they retired too many (all of their Airbus A330s, Boeing 767s) during the pandemic – and weren’t able to take advantage of the big return of Europe flying that benefited United and Delta.

BA was also short of aircraft, so needed to pull back from some flying and support others less frequently than they’d have liked. Boeing has resumed deliveries. American is getting more widebodies (Boeing 787-9s) and retrofits of their Boeing 777-300ERs are delayed. So together they work through which carrier flies where.

Other changes they’ve announced for summer 2026:

• BA will move to year-round London Gatwick – Bangkok service, rather than winter only (but still non-daily – three times a week in summer and six times weekly in winter)
  
• They’re adding a fourth weekly London Gatwick – Kingston, Jamaica flight for summer.
  
• Las Vegas increases from 10 to 13 weekly flights from Heathrow. This is the archetypal BA flight as part of the American Airlines joint venture.
  
• Both San Diego and Austin will expand to full double daily for summer 2026. This is an additional one flight a week for each.
  
• The single London Gatwick to New York JFK flight will move to Heathrow, giving BA 9 daily flights between the airports. That’s in addition to the four offered by American.
  
• BA will upgrade Bahrain service from three times weekly to daily, and increase Jeddah to 5 weekly flights and both Riyadh and Doha to double daily.

British Airways at New York JFK

Ultimately, these adds along with BA’s return to Dallas-Fort Worth and expansion in Miami highlight how the joint venture with American balances efficiency with the need to place its most premium-heavy aircraft where customer demand is strongest, and the easing of widebody scarcity.