We’ve seen airlines massively reduce their flight schedules, though most of the changes have been relatively short-term, with a focus on cancelling flights in the coming weeks.
Well, American Airlines has just massively reworked their schedule, and there are some pretty big implications. American Airlines is canceling a majority of their international flights through the summer.
American Airlines suspends most international capacity
American Airlines has revealed further capacity cuts to address record low customer demand. Specifically, American Airlines will:
- Suspend more than 60% of international capacity for peak summer travel season, including 80% of Pacific capacity, 65% of Atlantic capacity, and 48% of Latin America capacity
- Delay the launch of many inaugural flights to 2021
- Suspend 26 summer seasonal flights until summer 2021
As American Airlines describes it, these changes are due to significantly decreased customer demand and government travel restrictions.
While probably not the primary motivator, I imagine a further consideration is that American Airlines is retiring their 757-200s, 767-300s, and A330-300s early, and these planes were supposed to be used for long haul flights.
American Airlines is retiring 767s effective immediately
Here are some of the highlights of American’s route changes:
Transatlantic routes being cancelled altogether
To start, American Airlines will cancel the following 26 transatlantic routes altogether for this summer:
- Charlotte to Barcelona, Dublin, Madrid, Paris, and Rome
- Dallas to Munich and Rome
- New York to Rome
- Chicago to Budapest, Krakow, Paris, Prague, Rome, and Venice
- Philadelphia to Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Casablanca, Dubrovnik, Edinburgh, Lisbon, Prague, Reykjavik, Shannon, and Venice
American is cancelling over two dozen transatlantic routes
Many inaugural flights being delayed to 2021
It’s also worth noting some pretty significant new routes American was supposed to launch this year, which will now launch in 2021:
- Seattle to Bangalore will be delayed from October 2020, to some point in 2021
- Los Angeles to Christchurch and Dallas to Auckland will be delayed from October 2020, to winter 2021
- Dallas to Tel Aviv will be delayed from September 2020 to September 2021
- I noted this above, but American was supposed to fly from Philadelphia to Casablanca starting this summer (their first flight to Africa), and that is also delayed to 2021
These are some of the most exciting new routes we’ve seen from American Airlines in a long time, so it sure is sad to see them all taken out of the schedule.
American is delaying the new Seattle to Bangalore flight
Many transatlantic flights being delayed
Summer is usually the peak travel season for transatlantic flights, but many routes to Europe are being pushed back, either to July or October 2020.
The following flights will now resume as of July 2020:
- Charlotte to London
- Charlotte to Munich
- Dallas to Dublin
- New York to Paris
- New York to Madrid
- Miami to Madrid
- Chicago to Barcelona
- Philadelphia to Madrid
- Philadelphia to Zurich
The following flights will now resume as of October 2020:
- Boston to London
- Charlotte to Frankfurt
- Miami to Barcelona
- Miami to Paris
- New York to Barcelona
- New York to Milan
- Philadelphia to Paris
- Philadelphia to Rome
- Philadelphia to Manchester
- Phoenix to London
Some transatlantic flights will only resume in October 2020
Most Asia-Pacific flights delayed to October 2020
American Airlines has already suspended most flights to Asia, and many of those suspensions have now been extended.
The following four routes are expected to resume as of July 2020:
- Dallas to Hong Kong
- Dallas to Tokyo Haneda
- Dallas to Seoul Incheon
- Los Angeles to Tokyo Haneda
The following seven routes will now resume as of October 2020:
- Dallas to Beijing
- Dallas to Shanghai
- Los Angeles to Auckland
- Los Angeles to Beijing
- Los Angeles to Hong Kong
- Los Angeles to Shanghai
- Los Angeles to Sydney
Los Angeles to Hong Kong will resume in October 2020
Bottom line
While airlines cancelling a significant number of flights is expected at this point, I think this is particularly noteworthy. Most cancellations have been short term, while American Airlines has wiped out a majority of their summer schedule at this point.
Furthermore, the exciting new routes to Bangalore, Casablanca, Christchurch, and Tel Aviv, have all been pushed off until 2021.
What do you make of American’s latest schedule change?
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