American Airlines announced several new long haul routes today, even though most of them aren’t actually new.
It’s mostly bringing back old routes for summer. American continues the old US Airways tradition of doing most of their Europe as summer seasonal, though they’ve talked up turning summer routes into year-round for Philadelphia once the Airbus A321XLR arrives in the fleet.
| U.S. Hub | Destination | Seasonality | Aircraft | |||
| Dallas | Athens | Summer seasonal starting May 21, 2026 | Boeing 787-8 | |||
| Dallas | Buenos Aires | Extended service May 21-Aug. 3, 2026 | 787-8 | |||
| Dallas | Zurich | Summer seasonal May 21-Aug. 4, 2026 | Boeing 777-200 | |||
| Miami | Milan | Year-round starting March 29, 2026 | 787-8 | |||
| Philadelphia | Budapest | Summer seasonal starting May 21, 2026 | 787-8 | |||
| Philadelphia | Prague | Summer seasonal starting May 21, 2026 | 787-8 | |||
American Airlines Boeing 787-8
Dallas – Athens gives them a fifth Athens flight. Premium leisure to Athens is strong. This is just a Boeing 787-8, though, so very few business class seats to fill.
Prague and Budapest were pre-pandemic destinations American had added, serving the river cruse market. They had cheap lift then in the form of Boeing 767s, which were retired during the pandemic. Now they’ll be served with Boeing 787-8s as well. That’s great in some ways, but again tough to get business class on that aircraft.
American used to serve Dallas- Zurich (not since 2007) and Miami – Milan (ended in 2020). American is the only U.S. carrier with announced service to Budapest. I always thought a New York JFK – BUdapest flight would be workable for Delta (but that United might try it first from Newark).
Meanwhile, Aemrican also announced an upgauging of two Tokyo flights – both Dallas and Los Angeles – Tokyo Haneda will see a Boeing 777-300ER replace a Boeing 787-9, representing a lot more premium capacity starting March 29, 2026.
It’s notable, though, that there’s nothing new here for the New York JFK or Chicago O’Hare hubs. And I expected to see Charlotte – Barcelona, to be honest.
Real news.
AA doing something that doesn’t suck.
Where are the two 787-9s going to be deployed?
I guess AA really is simply ‘abdicating’ to Delta and United in NYC. (Good news, @Tim Dunn!) As for the new routes, ‘great’ for you Texans. For Philly, those ‘eastern’ European routes are interesting. I’ve taken Delta’s JFK-PRG, on their ancient 763, and it was nice to not have to connect. Clearly, the 789 is a better aircraft. And I don’t think any other US carriers currently fly nonstop to BUD.
Now I’ve seen everything. Not a single airline serves Budapest from JFK or Newark, so AA decides to serve the city . . . from Philadelphia.
Really nice to see AA growing in Philadelphia. Let’s hope that the new Philadelphia routes run through the end of August. AA ends their seasonal routes so short.
@Sharon — Growing? Other than Frontier, hardly anyone else but American even flies outta Philly!
AA is very “not bold” when it comes to having an uniqueness on route planning. Like nothing Asia to PHX. Of course PHX itself represents the America West mentality. Lounges that mirror 1985.
All but DFW-ATH are recycled routes that flew previously.
BUD and PRG are interesting. The market has softened substantially there as the riverboat cruise industry is not as big along the Danube etc…as it was until 2019 due to droughts. Either AA anticipates strong demand or is just trying to rebuild the network it couldn’t until it had more wide bodies.
MIA-MXP makes sense and should do well.
DFW-ATH will potentially siphon traffic off ORD and CLT to ATH, PHL too.
DFW-ZRH is just there for World Cup and a little premium leisure. There’s no corporate traffic to chase here for such a short season.
@1990 silly boy. PHL is a busy airport with over 30 million pax a year. AA only has about 65% of the market share, the rest is scattered among the domestic and international carriers.
@Mak PHL-BUD makes perfect sense for AA. If there was enough O&D between NYC and BUD there would be service by DL or UA. AA needs the feeder traffic the PHL hub provides to make the leisure route work.
When do these new routes end? From the start dates they look seasonal but outside of ZRH they don’t say.
@Gary,
AA used to fly JFK-BUD way back in 2011 with the 767-300, but it only lasted one season.
Your comments about not having enough premium seats on the 787-8’s is interesting. I’m sure someone booking them will have no issue. I expect you meant free upgrades or miles redemption.
@Pilot93434 — So does that mean you flew with AA? I was thinking on the prior post it was either AA or UA, based on your 727 and 773 preferences.
@George Romey — By ‘Asia’ could you be more specific, like, is Israel considered Asia, or do you mean, South or East Asia, like India or Japan, etc.?
@Parker — Bah! Yes, that was silly-goofballs indeed. 65% is still a lot. But, it’s not Charlotte (90% American) or Atlanta (80% Delta).
regarding the comments about PHX and the lack of international traffic, the heat in AZ is a huge hindrance to long haul traffic. PHX airport is actually slightly higher in altitude at 1135 feet than downtown Phoenix.
One of the new PHX-TPE flights will be a nighttime departure in order to be nonstop and the daytime departure will stop at LAX.
PHX is geographically not that great of a location for either TPAC or TATL connections.
Even though LAS is higher altitude, it is a larger local market.
DEN and SLC both have better locations for connections which offsets their higher altitude.
Never anything out of Boston.
So what’s ‘new’ ? … ‘Old’ flights to the ‘Old World’ , a logical match !
… lol
@Pilot93434 – no, I actually mean not enough premium seats to sell, back in 2018 when AA was removing premium seats Vasu was complaining about it for this very reason https://viewfromthewing.com/american-says-they-need-more-premium-seats-so-theyre-getting-rid-of-premium-seats/
Many of these are ‘temporary” and just for the World Cup.
A lot of AA ex-EU flights are being cancelled lately (my daughter has been stuck IB LHR for 48 hours due to AA operational cx. And it’s not just UK but the whole EU, Japan, Korea, etc.
Tourism numbers into US are down, really down, and it will be interesting to see Q3 numbers on exactly how bad tourism is in the US.
The FAA needs to pull AA’s unused slots at JFK. We can debate the wisdom of AA’s European hub strategy being in PHL but for Heaven’s sake give the slots to an airline that will use them.
Key
don’t worry. AA and B6’s underutilized JFK slots are being utilized – by DL.
The FAA allows airlines that want to use underutilized slots to do so if the “owner” doesn’t.
DL is flying about 9 flights/day more than it has been allocated at JFK.
@Tim Dunn — JFK is a wild airport. (Some would say ‘idle wild’… sorry, bad joke.) Like, most mornings are quiet. T8 and T1 is near empty at 9AM. Meanwhile, T5 is packed, B6 operating a ton; T4 is always busy. Never seen it not busy. Glad FAA doesn’t like slots go to waste.
1990
DL understands that the largest carrier at an airport gets a disproportionately larger share of the traffic. UA understands it at ORD as well. AA has taken their foot off the gas pedal multiple times in NYC and DL has just grow in their place at both LGA and JFK.
People forget that the genesis of the NEA was AA’s failure to use its slots to FAA requirements. the DOT knew they could not just drop slot requirements at LGA or JFK as they did at EWR when UA underutilized its slots there because DL would grow even faster at LGA and JFK.
The mechanism for another carrier to use individual underutilized slots is to keep the DOT from having to force AA or B6 to use their slots or transfer them to someone else that would have just as hard of a time competing against DL.
With the capacity restrictions the FAA has imposed at EWR, DL is clearly the largest carrier in NYC, operating 33% more flights from the 3 airports than UA and carried 11% more passengers. UA carries more international passengers than DL from NYC but DL carried 28% more domestic passengers in June.
DL carries almost as many passengers from all 3 airports as AA and B6 combined.
competition is good but DL has simply executed its NYC strategy while AA, B6 and UA have all slipped on the proverbial banana.
I don’t think it will be long before we see DL adding flights from JFK to S. and E. Asia, taking away the sole advantage UA has from NYC.
AA simply has recognized they aren’t large enough in NYC to compete and never can be so redeveloping PHL (for the umpteenth time) makes more sense than losing money in NYC. It remains to be seen if being a niche player in NYC will work for AA.
@tomri – AA has ceded BOS to B6 and DL…which is consistent with their inconsistent and rather schizophrenic strategy in the NE. AA’s best bet right now is to double-down on PHL where they have the capacity to support a robust TATL operation supported by feeder traffic from the domestic hub operations that have room to grow at PHL (which has some unleased gates in D and E, I believe). They can also upgauge aircraft –> there was a time I recall that smaller mainline jets would use F.
Parker
BOS is yet another city where AA and B6 sabotaged their position thinking the NEA would save them. The DOJ’s decision and the court ruling allowed DL to swoop in even deeper while AA and B6 struggled to figure out what to do.
DL is running its gates at BOS far harder than any other airline – about 3 flights/day more per gate than AA and UA which each use their gates for less than 5 flights/day.
Just like airport slots w/ the FAA, airports want to see their airport facilities used as much as possible. BOS is working on a connector between DL’s A terminal and the B gates that are connected to the rest of BOS’s terminals. Like LAX, BOS wants passengers to be able to connect airside between every terminal.
AC uses 3 gates in terminal B closest to DL and then AA has two entire concourses that are very lightly used.
It is very possible that we could see a gate shift at BOS with DL taking over a chunk of B gates and forcing other carriers to consolidate in the B concourse with some carriers moving to the E concourse.
If DL wins at its reported attempts to have BOS start reallocating gates from other airlines to DL, the competitive impact will be far larger than what UA is doing at ORD simply because BOS has a much higher percentage of local traffic than ORD does.
My guess is that this is phase 1 of their announcements. There is still likely uncertainty around deliveries I’m thinking these announcements are based on what they are 100% certain about. If deliveries get more firm later in the year, I could see a second round. I believe they did that last year as well.
Agreed that CLT-BCN is a no-brainer and the lack of ORD is also surprising given their stated goal of growing and being more competitive there.
@Tim Dunn — I’m with you on your NYC region analysis. I’d love to see DL bring their own South and East Asia routes to JFK. They may just need to fly them in the morning or the middle of the night, when there’s more availability. Why it isn’t a 24/7 airport like some overseas is beyond me. Like, Doha is packed at 12AM, 8AM, and 8PM. Instead of 1 or 2 ‘peak’ times, why not 3 or 4? More jobs, too. And I enjoyed the proverbial banana metaphor; so much potassium around here!
Nothing at all for business travellers…all just more of the ‘over-touristed’ routes to stupid places for stupid people. For many years, AA served Brussels from NYC and Chicago. They even ran a Dusseldorf – O’Hare for a few years …and now, it’s just a the PHL – AMS flight, which during the ‘tulip and summer’ season is ridiculously crowded with ‘this is my first trip abroad’ tourists.