American Flying Empty Airbus A321neo Across The Atlantic 20 Times

Well here’s something you don’t see that often, as flagged by JonNYC. This month, American Airlines is intentionally operating 20 roundtrip flights across the Atlantic without any passengers or cargo. What’s the logic for this? Well, there’s an interesting explanation, as you’d expect…

American’s empty Philadelphia to Edinburgh flights

American operates a daily seasonal flight between Philadelphia (PHL) and Edinburgh (EDI), using a Boeing 787, which is currently scheduled for several more weeks. Separate from that, between September 4 and September 24, 2025, American is operating daily flights in the market using a standard domestic configured Airbus A321neo. The flight has no passengers or cargo, and operates daily with the following schedule:

AA9805 Philadelphia to Edinburgh departing 8:40PM arriving 8:30AM (+1 day)
AA9806 Edinburgh to Philadelphia departing 9:30AM arriving 12:00PM

The flight is even expected to be operated by the same exact aircraft every day — a brand new A321neo with the registration code N471AN. Why would American operate 20 empty roundtrip transatlantic flights? Well, it’s about training check airman.

You see, American will soon start flying Airbus A321XLRs, which are a longer range version of the A321neo. In theory, there’s not much difference between the Airbus A320-family aircraft variants, and if it were used mostly for domestic operations, not much extra training would be needed.

However, these planes will largely be used for transatlantic flights, and that requires extra training compared to non-transatlantic operations. So American is operating these flights so that check airmen (basically American pilots who train and certify other pilots) can get their qualifications, and in turn, can certify a bunch of other pilots to fly this plane.

Often you’d train check airmen on regularly scheduled flights, but since American has no transatlantic operations with the Airbus A320-family of aircraft, the training has to start somewhere. Presumably Philadelphia to Edinburgh was chosen because it’s basically the shortest full transatlantic flight to a decent sized airport that doesn’t have major traffic issues.

This is all being done in anticipation of American opening an international A321XLR pilot base in New York (JFK) in the coming months.

Running an airline is complicated, eh?

The airline industry is incredibly complex under the best of circumstances, but it’s pretty wild do think what a big expense this is (not to mention the amount of fuel being “wasted”). A brand new Airbus A321neo will be operating 40 transatlantic flights, covering a total distance of around 134,000 miles.

On the low end, the fuel, depreciation, etc., has to come in at well over a million bucks. And that doesn’t account for how pilots get paid during training, etc.

That brings me to another question… I understand the need for specialized training, but does anyone know what actually happens on these transatlantic flights that couldn’t be done in a simulator or classroom? Obviously these are all pilots who already know how to fly the plane, so it’s just transatlantic operations that they’re being certified on. So is it about interacting with air traffic control, understanding the North Atlantic Tracks, etc.?

I guess on-the-job training is always better than theoretical training, but it’s still kind of wild that 20 roundtrip transatlantic flights are being operated empty so that experienced pilots on this aircraft can get a certain certification.

Also, purely from an aviation geek standpoint, does anyone actually understand the logistics of these flights? How many pilots are actually on each of these flights? Does a check airman have to fly one roundtrip (and spend a night in Edinburgh), do they cycle pilots, or what? And how does the check airman who is certifying other check airmen get their certification, because obviously that certification cycle has to start somewhere?

Bottom line

This month, American Airlines is operating 20 roundtrip transatlantic flights between Philadelphia and Edinburgh, without any passengers or cargo. This is being done with an Airbus A321neo, in anticipation of the A321XLR entering service. In order to get pilots trained for transatlantic operations, the airline needs check airmen on Airbus jets, and their training has to start somewhere as well.

So if you see this A321neo flying between the two airports over the coming weeks, now you know why…

What do you make of these American transatlantic training flights?