Surprising: American Cuts Miami To Tel Aviv Route

Surprising: American Cuts Miami To Tel Aviv Route

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American Airlines will be discontinuing flights between Miami and Tel Aviv, less than two years after launching this service…

American cuts Miami to Tel Aviv flights March 2023

As first flagged by @xJonNYC and confirmed by an American Airlines spokesperson, American Airlines will be discontinuing its route between Miami (MIA) and Tel Aviv (TLV) as of March 24, 2023. The airline will continue to operate daily flights to Tel Aviv from New York (JFK), and American will proactively reach out to customers affected by these changes, to offer alternate travel arrangements.

https://twitter.com/xJonNYC/status/1611357582907547648

American describes this as a “difficult decision” following “a continuous evaluation” of the carrier’s network. With American ending service in the market, EL AL will be left as the only airline linking Florida and Israel.

For context, American only launched the Miami to Tel Aviv route in June 2021, with 4x weekly frequencies. Then as of October 2022, the airline increased the route to daily, which one would assume reflects strong performance. When the route was first launched, it was operated by a Boeing 777-200ER, but it has since been downgraded to a Boeing 787-8.

American only returned to Israel as of 2021, after not having flown them for many years. In May 2021 the airline launched a New York to Tel Aviv route, and that was quickly followed by a Miami to Tel Aviv route. While American was also going to launch a Dallas to Tel Aviv route, that route never ended up launching.

American will end its Miami to Tel Aviv service

Why is American canceling Miami to Tel Aviv flights?

This is a cancelation I didn’t see coming. It’s not often you see a route launched, fairly quickly get additional frequencies, and then be canceled. It makes you wonder if the route is being canceled because it was losing money, or if it’s being canceled because American has a shortage of wide body aircraft, and the airline thinks the plane can more profitably be utilized elsewhere.

This Miami to Tel Aviv route is a pretty long journey, with a lot of time on the ground in Tel Aviv — the plane departs Miami at around 8:30PM, and returns nearly 34 hours later, around 6AM. With the route being cut around the start of the summer airline schedule, perhaps the airline thinks a plane can better be utilized for seasonal service to Europe, or for service to Asia, especially with mainland China opening up again.

Furthermore, I can’t help but wonder if American just wasn’t using the right plane for the route. Tel Aviv can often be quite a premium market, yet the 787-8 only has 20 business class seats, which isn’t a lot of business class capacity at all.

It’s interesting how United has been incredibly successful with Tel Aviv, and now operates flights there from Chicago, Newark, San Francisco, and Washington. Meanwhile American will just operate a single daily flight to Israel.

Given that American was going to operate three routes to Tel Aviv, what exactly went wrong? I can’t help but wonder…

United is the most successful US airline in Israel

Bottom line

American Airlines will discontinue its Miami to Tel Aviv route as of March 2023. This comes less than two years after the route launched, and just several months after the route was upgraded from 4x weekly service to daily service.

I can’t help but wonder what the motivation is here — was the route performing that poorly?

Are you surprised to see American discontinue its Miami to Tel Aviv route?

Conversations (36)
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  1. Amit Cohen Guest

    Do you think the flight from Dallas will be launched soon?

    1. Bob K Guest

      Doubt it. AA offered the nonstop DFW-TLV and I booked it. Of course the flight never started, so my flight and my seats were changed to go through JFK. Thanks to COVID, I had miss my return flight. There was no way to rebook online using my "flight credits" and after hours on the phone on hold, I just gave up used my points to get home. I am turned off of AA now, they...

      Doubt it. AA offered the nonstop DFW-TLV and I booked it. Of course the flight never started, so my flight and my seats were changed to go through JFK. Thanks to COVID, I had miss my return flight. There was no way to rebook online using my "flight credits" and after hours on the phone on hold, I just gave up used my points to get home. I am turned off of AA now, they dominate DFW but I will always look for another airline first. Cancelled my CC with Admirals club access.

  2. OA Guest

    They kept codeshare connections with ElAl the whole time. You could fly LY from TLV and continue on AA or JB to anywhere. AA loves hubs and connections (like lhr/mad with BA/IB), only except CDG which is probably for historical reasons.
    So they probably want to just continue offering far away destinations as a stopover. Let's see what they do with India.

  3. Anon 1982 Guest

    odd. it must have been a financial thing..... as Miami is 30% jewish, 70% latino.

  4. Jeb Guest

    Perhaps they are eliminating this route due to those originating on TLV much prefer the service El Al provides compared to AA & Israeli citizens are very loyal to El Al & automatically select them over AA even if they are markedly more expensive in all classes.

  5. Interested Traveler Guest

    I heard some speculation that a lot had to do with far lower group purchases from Birthright Israel which has had far lower funding since Sheldon Adelson passed away.

    A friend flew the route four times and said that Business was never full, so that may have something to do with it to, if they can't sell out business class reliably the plane is probably better used elsewhere.

  6. Andy Diamond

    If a return trip takes 34 hours, this basically means that the airline has to deploy 1.5 aircraft to this route (under the condition they have another similar route) or two aircraft (if there is no other similar route). Fares to TLV are generally not much higher than Europe, which can easily be done in about 20 hours return.

    1. Andrew Guest

      American has never been a fan of TLV routes. They never had their own, they cancelled the TWA service from NY, the US Airways service from PHL, never launched DFW and are now cancelling MIA. There’s more to this then meets the eye. United and Delta do well with this route, especially United.

  7. AaronP Guest

    Bummer, I flew it last April for Passover. Maybe the extra security involved at MIA factored into the decision???

  8. Michael_FFM Diamond

    MIA probably doesn't have good feed opportunities for TLV compared to UA's and DL's hubs. So it will mostly rely on P2P traffic, which apparently isn't great. So no big mystery here.

    1. Bob Guest

      Miami is a major American Airlines hub. They have. Plenty of feed. American earlier canceled service from DFW. DFW is the second largest hub in the world, the largest for AA.
      Makes no sense.

    2. Uriel Guest

      looks like it is time for me to use all of my miles with AA....

    3. D3kingg Guest

      @Michael_FFM @BOB

      That’s a broad topic. Each AA hub has a different regional focus. For Example, MIA is heavily focused on Central and South America routes while PHL serves Europe.

      Regardless of Airline I think Israel should have routes to the US where the Jews are ; JFK and LAX at the very least.

  9. Steve Guest

    Not surprising given the developing political situation between Israel and the U.S. these days.

    1. D3kingg Guest

      @Steve

      The current situation is basically that if anything were to happen to Israel they could not count on the US to come to their defense militarily . John Kerry gave Iran the coordinates of Israel’s nuclear locations in exchange for a bag of cash. Not to worry Israel can defend herself. Hopefully with Netanyahu back in power he can stabilize the international community as there is currently no world leader.

  10. Alex Guest

    Surprising but not bizarre, if the route was performing poorly that is the end result.
    Speaking of cutting routes It’s a real shame the AA decided not to bring back the MIA-MXP
    so sad, great city that made so easy to connect throughout Europe.

  11. Tim Dunn Diamond

    TLV is yet another city where AA has struggled to compete against DL and UA.
    DL's new (returning) ATL-TLV service provides far better connections to the SE.

    And the amount of aircraft time that AA is using on its MIA-TLV flight probably is a factor in helping kill the route.

  12. AD Guest

    I just saw tonight that my scheduler has me booked outbound through JFK on AA and back from TLV through MIA at the end of January. I did notice that the TLV-MIA business class cabin is very small and already very full for a return a month out.

    1. Garnett Leary Guest

      That is a poor choice by ending the Mia tlv flight like please consider keeping the Mia tlv flight people are getting very upset that you are ending the tlv Mia service

  13. Tom Guest

    Horrible aircraft utilization, crap yields (no, TLV is not a high yield market, Ben) so makes perfect sense AA could find a better use for the two frames this route requires.

  14. Randy Diamond

    Maybe it comes down to FF programs - with Continental then United having the most flights to TLV. CO/UA is big in NYC - EWR and in ORD. Maybe people are already hooked on UA and *Alliance. A new entrant may not get people to move over.

  15. yehuda kovesh Guest

    I have a CDG-MIA flight coming up in a month and when I called to postpone the flight by few weeks, I was told that they will not be flying MIA-CDG outside of winter months??? I dont particularly like flying AA but would like to keep the Status for benefits when traveling abroad on other OW partners

  16. BenjaminGuttery Diamond

    Very disappointed in AA's routes right now too. I go to Germany/Switzerland numerous times a year from DFW. I always have to connect in PHL or CLT. Bring back DFW-Munich and other international flights to DFW. I very much dislike flying to & from Philadelphia and Charlotte airports.

  17. Frank Guest

    There were at least 9 seats for sale in J on every flight and AA wanted 300k miles for a one way ha ha ha. Their network planners are horrible.

  18. Jordan Diamond

    What else is there to say? They tried it, it's not working, they are leaving. Clearly FL jews said no thanks to AA metal from MIA, or AA could finally pull out.

    Many other options.

  19. John Guest

    I am so disappointed with AA's international network. For the size of the airline, I am so surprised with their lack of ability to build a real network and make it work. Flying to LHR, MAD and CDG is not an international network.

    1. D3kingg Guest

      @John

      What about British Airways in LHR and Iberia in MAD ? One world alliance .

    2. Caleb Guest

      Sure, they have partners. But that's not the point. I live in Chicago and AA has just one daily, year-round destination in Europe - London. Paris isn't daily in the winter and every other destination is seasonal. In winter, AA or partners fly daily to LHR or MAD. That's it. That's a pretty pathetic network.

  20. ConcordeBoy Diamond

    Surprising. I guess with airlines having such limited fleet utility due to the Covid retirements, routes that require long ground-time really have to pull their share of weight, in order to stick around.

    The likes of GIG and TLV don't seem to cut it anymore. :(

  21. DMNYC Member

    Ben, not totally sure what you mean by "many" years, but before re-launching TLV service in 2021, AA last served TLV from Philadelphia in 2016 (taking over the route after the merger with US).

  22. sharon Guest

    Bizzare. Why would American upgrade to daily service and then cancel??

    Using Asian flights as an excuse is poor- did they forget that Asia would reopen again sometime?

    United, Delta, and El Al will happily pick up the slack. In Fact, Delta now serves Tel Aviv from Atlanta, easily accessible from all major Florida markets.

  23. dn10 Guest

    Likely using that plane for another Asia route.

  24. D3kingg Guest

    That equipment will be needed for an Asian route. China , HK , or Tokyo

  25. Dan Guest

    The cancellation was already twitted 3 days ago and not by Jon.
    https://twitter.com/ressleroren/status/1610018120080424960?s=46&t=n4bJGtYnVLGlhD-f6kvBQw

  26. abey Guest

    AA simply dont play, jump in and get out before giving it a chance

Featured Comments Most helpful comments ( as chosen by the OMAAT community ).

The comments on this page have not been provided, reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser, and it is not an advertiser's responsibility to ensure posts and/or questions are answered.

John Guest

I am so disappointed with AA's international network. For the size of the airline, I am so surprised with their lack of ability to build a real network and make it work. Flying to LHR, MAD and CDG is not an international network.

4
sharon Guest

Bizzare. Why would American upgrade to daily service and then cancel?? Using Asian flights as an excuse is poor- did they forget that Asia would reopen again sometime? United, Delta, and El Al will happily pick up the slack. In Fact, Delta now serves Tel Aviv from Atlanta, easily accessible from all major Florida markets.

4
Frank Guest

There were at least 9 seats for sale in J on every flight and AA wanted 300k miles for a one way ha ha ha. Their network planners are horrible.

3
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