The world’s largest airline is shrinking a bit with three notable route cuts.
American Airlines filed plans earlier this week to reduce service between Boston and Toronto, Chicago and San Jose, Costa Rica, Philadelphia and Akron, Ohio, as first seen on Cirium’s schedule and later confirmed by a company spokesperson.
While American will continue to serve all three destinations from other hub airports, the removal of these routes is interesting for a number of reasons.
First, the Boston to Toronto flight was added back in April 2021, launch key market as part of Northeastern Alliance with JetBlue. At that point, the airline hopes to use the plane transfer service to connect passengers to JetBlue’s extensive network from Boston. It will allow Americans to expand internationally from Boston and provide JetBlue with an additional feed in this key key city.
While it looks like a win-win on paper, the line’s performance doesn’t seem to be up to the American expectations and it will be cut as of January 9, 2023.
However, the Americans did not completely abandon the strategy of using a short trans-ice route in the Northeast to connect to a broader network. On January 10, 2023 – just one day after the Boston flight ends – American will launch a service between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and Toronto’s Pearson Airport (YYZ) with services flight twice a day.
The route will be operated by Republic Airways, a subsidiary of American Eagle, on a 76-seat Embraer E175 regional aircraft.
American previously served this route back in December 2019 and now it will return just hours after the Boston flight ends. The airline seems to think it will have better luck connecting New York with Toronto. After all, Americans provide a More powerful network from JFKand it can also mine JetBlue’s big action is therealso.
In terms of competition, American will go up against both Delta and newcomer to Flair Airlines for JFK flights to Toronto.
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Elsewhere, American is cutting another new route it started during the pandemic. In August 2021, the airline submitted plans to add new flights for the two largest airports in Costa Rica: San Jose (SJO) and Liberia (LIR). By flying to both the capital and to Liberia on the west coast, American is able to provide visitors with a comprehensive itinerary to explore the place. famous Central American country.
While the airline continues to roll out both routes, only one will return in another season. The Liberia route will resume in January with once-a-week service and American will no longer fly between Chicago and San Jose. The airline had originally planned to restart seasonal flights on this route in March 2023.
“We will continue to provide service to San Jose, Costa Rica from our hubs in Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth and Miami,” a spokesperson for the airline said in a statement. United Airlines, which also operates a hub in Chicago, will continue to serve the San Jose route with once-weekly service.
Finally, American has planned to restart its flight between Philadelphia and Akron next April with seasonal twice-daily service. That will no longer be the case and the route will be cut from the airline’s network instead. Historically, American has flown year-round between these two cities, so the airline doesn’t seem to be anticipating enough demand to secure this route much longer.
When American pulls out of the market, no other airline will offer non-stop service between Philadelphia and Akron, although it will still fly to Charlotte and Washington Regan National from the Ohio airport.
