American Airlines announced on Thursday plans to launch three new international routes to Europe next summer with non-stop service from Philadelphia to Copenhagen in Denmark, Naples in Italy and Nice on the French Côte d’Azur.
In addition to AA’s brand-new destinations for 2024, the carrier also announced plans to launch a new service from its Dallas Fort Worth hub to Barcelona in the Catalonia region of Spain and the resumption of flights from Chicago to Venice, Italy.
Explaining the strategy behind the new routes, Brian Znotins, SVP of network planning, said AA wanted to find “year-round homes for airplanes” and, in particular, widebody jets that underperform on domestic routes.
American Airlines will be utilising a fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners for its summer seasonal routes that will be paired with winter destinations or heavy maintenance work so that the carrier gets optimum use out of the airplanes all year long.
Znotins addressed criticism that the airline has shied away from starting up new destinations in recent years, saying that worries about delivery delays from Boeing had hampered its ability to expand its network.
“Last summer, we decided with Boeing delays and uncertainty around deliveries, we really wanted to add new destinations last summer, but we thought there was a lot of risk to that,” Znotins explained.
“If Boeing further delayed airplanes and we announced a Philly to Naples service, and we had to pull that flight down, it’s really hard to get those passengers to Naples”.
“Instead, we took a lower-risk approach, and we said okay, let’s add extra flights to Rome, Athens and Paris, and if Boeing doesn’t deliver airplanes, we’ve plenty of capacity to add passengers to other flights,” Znotins continued.
Tickets will go on sale on August 20 for all the new flights:
- Copenhagen service will start on June 6, 2024
- Naples service will start on June 5, 2024
- Nice service will start on May 6, 2024
Both Copenhagen and Nice will be served by a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, while Naples will have a slightly smaller Boeing 787-8 operating the flight.
Znotins also provided some insight into why Philadelphia was getting the new routes, saying that AA is able to bring potential passengers on around 40 domestic flights into PHL in a short time frame and connect them to the Copenhagen, Naples or Nice service.
In contrast, Znotins explained that routes from New York JFK to the likes of Tel Aviv or Delhi were primarily targeting the local New York market and that capacity constraints in JFK meant it could only bring in a quarter of the connecting passengers that PHL can handle.
On Thursday, American Airlines also announced its intention to start a new daily service from Dallas Fort Worth to Barcelona from June 5, 2024, and resume a daily service from Chicago O’Hare to Venice beginning June 5, 2024.
On top of those announcements, AA is expanding service on a slew of European routes, as well as its popular services to the Caribbean and South America.
