With No Viable New York Strategy, American Airlines Shifts Focus To Philadelphia [Roundup]

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • American’s new Dallas – Barcelona flight gets its aircraft from the second New York JFK – Rome, another New York elimination post-Northeast Alliance. Remind me how opposing that was ‘good for competition’ in New York? They’ll also cut Dallas – Santiago and one of their Dallas – Paris routes for summer 2024.

  • Meanwhile, simultaneously squats New York slots (absent a New York strategy) while attempting to funnel some New York-originating traffic onto Philadelphia flights. Remind me how opposing the JetBlue partnership was ‘good for competition’ in New York?

    Of course international adds in Philadelphia will support more domestic service there, as many of those domestic passengers will be connecting onto international. American isn’t just adding Philadelphia – LaGuardia, they’re also adding Philadelphia – San Antonio as well.

  • Air Canada now allows status members to use eUpgrades for up to two companions, not just one. And their ‘status passes’ can be applied by their expiration date to future travel, they no longer need to be used for travel by their expiration date. Both improvements!

  • Inside the new El Al loyalty program it is still quite bad.

  • Australian government finally getting heat for how it helps out Qantas at the expense of its taxpayers and Qantas’ customers. This time the biggest spotlight is on denying new flights to Qatar Airways (which compete with the Qantas-Emirates joint venture especially).

  • Turkish flight spent several hours in closed Ukranian airspace

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 »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  2. AA should look to the long term and very slowly build ùp JFK and LGA. With computers, they can see where the demand is to best use their slots. Add AI to see where there is synergy. One example of synergy is United finding out that leaving JFK was bad because some companies stopped flying United because they needed a few key flights from JFK. Not a hub, just a few business important cities.

  3. Finally good news for PHL passengers who can fly to Europe cheaper than they can fly to Boston, Chicago, or most domestic locations on American if this adds more capacity for domestic flights back to the network.

  4. AA botching NYC was happening long before they inked the NEA – the government is not responsible for bailing out an airline’s poor strategy through approving an alliance

  5. It wasn’t Turkish Airlines, it was a new charter airline based in Turkey per the link.

  7. Taxi understands what John does not.
    AA could have used a strategy like they have with AS in NYC but they went for something they knew was legally problematic.
    There really can be no crocodile tears.
    AA is getting what it knew was an outcome.
    Best part is that AA is more profitable than it has been in decades. Not writing $200 million checks to JBLU will do wonders for AA’s finances.

    Sure, DL benefits the most with UA having to face the capacity limits of EWR which are far less than UA would like. And DL directly competes directly from JFK and LGA with AA.

    Some people can see the big picture and plan and benefit accordingly while others try to bend the rules and have it all backfire.

  8. I know nyc is the big apple but Philadelphia is a large city in the USA.
    American has many gates which it has been underutilizing at phl particularly in mid day. The city needs to force American to use them or give them back so there can be more competition. American has taken the Philadelphia market for granted for years. SW,UA,Dl seem to accept the status and not try to challenge American more.

  9. The legacy majors in the US all play mostly nice with each other because that’s their way to maximize their return with oligopolistic power, and together they fleece the consumers. The US Government screwed over consumers by allowing the market concentration it allowed post-2000, and our frequent flyer programs have gotten weaker following that market concentration.

  10. The team at US Air, which has ruined AA, helped create DL’s NY advantage with that LGA slot swap

Comments are closed.