US-based airline American Airlines (AA) has announced four new routes and the return of another as part of the airline’s “largest transatlantic expansion since 2019”.
The airline will launch new non-stop flights from Philadelphia (PHL) to Copenhagen, Denmark (CPH), Naples, Italy (NAP), and Nice, France (NCE).
AA will also start a new service between Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) and Barcelona, Spain (BCN), as well as bring back the service between Chicago (ORD) and Venice, Italy (VCE).
American’s network and schedule planning senior VP Brian Znotins said: “American is thrilled to add three new European destinations. The new service from Philadelphia and expanded transatlantic service from Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth will offer customers convenient one-stop access from more than 200 unique destinations across the US to Europe next summer.”
Commencing in summer 2024 period, the announcement features 15 daily non-stop flights from PHL to 14 European destinations next summer and starting 5 June, AA will inaugurate the new service to NAP.
The significance of restarting the ORD and VCE service demonstrates the airline’s high demand across these two regions.
Nicholas Wyatt, head of research & analysis for Travel & Tourism at GlobalData emphasised this strategic expansion from American Airlines into different parts of Europe.
Wyatt said: “American’s announcement of these new and restored routes is further evidence of travel’s impressive recovery. Airlines typically don’t roll out new routes without a great deal of thought and feasibility studies so American is clearly confident that there is demand for these popular European destinations, some of which serve as gateways to other tourism hotspots.
“It’s also worth noting that in the case of Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth, we are talking about two of American’s major hubs, these routes also have the potential to drive travel into those hubs, from where other American flights can also be taken.”
Aviation data company Cirium has noted in their capacity data trends that AA has grown in significance in terms of airline seats at DFW.
In Q3 2023, AA’s trends are set to accommodate 10,465,525 seats to DFW a 10% increase from Q3 2022.
According to Cirium’s monthly on-time performance report in July 2023, AA took third position with an OTP of 73.01%.
