American tried to spice things up with a teaser video for its summer 2025 European schedule reveal, but this wasn’t a spicy kind of announcement. Instead, American is choosing to stick to its strengths and grow its long-haul footprint conservatively next summer.
That being said, these moves do give some clear direction on where American is spending its time and how it views both Europe and its US hubs. And that’s what I’m going to talk about today.
Let’s start with an overview using this map that I’m stealing from Cranky Network Weekly.
As we wrote in CNW this week, there are three pretty clear trends going on here.
The Rise of Philly (Again)
Philadelphia has really gone through the ringer with American. It was only a couple years ago that Philly lagged the southern hubs in growth, and American had decided to refocus new long-haul flying out of JFK instead. When the judge struck down the airline’s Northeast Alliance with JetBlue, that whole plan to put JetBlue’s feed on these international airplanes fell apart, and American started warming up to Philly once again.
Last summer, it started flying from there to Copenhagen, Naples, and Nice. All will return next summer. Milan/Malpensa will now get a Philly flight as well. Today, that is surprisingly only served by the airline from JFK. And lastly, the only new dot over the Atlantic to join the map next summer is Edinburgh which gets a flight from Philly. That route (and city) was last served in summer 2019.
American is trying to get some more juice into its connecting hub, also adding 2x daily from Philly to both Des Moines and Omaha. Neither of those have flown since 2020, but they will at least route a few people a day into Europe.
With JFK out, Philly needs to rise as the airline’s primary European hub once again. That seems to be the plan, and once that works well, other hubs can join the party.
Other Hubs Join the Party
Though Philly may be getting more destinations, it’s the biggest destinations in Europe that will gain more US hub flying. Specifically, Charlotte will gain an Athens flight while Miami gets Rome/FCO. Miami also, I should note, will keep its Paris/CDG flight year-round for the first time in a few years.
Athens, Paris, and Rome… it doesn’t get much bigger than that when it comes to summer destinations for people in the US, so American is just trying to boost connectivity into these markets so it can take more traffic than the others.
Charlotte is now the fourth hub that has Athens service from American behind Philly, JFK, and Chicago. Rome has all those plus Miami now, of course, and Dallas/Fort Worth. Paris has the same as Rome, but now it’s year-round to all of those.
This is betting on the strength of those big, traditional European destinations. It’s a far cry from what we see other airlines like United do when they try to add breadth to their network. But if there’s one thing all airlines like, it’s…
Hub-to-Hub Growth
You would think that a route like Chicago/O’Hare – Madrid is one that American would have served for years. It has its own hub in Chicago while Madrid is the growing home of joint venture partner Iberia. Yet somehow, American has not served this market.
Iberia has flown this route 1x daily in summer for years, occasionally more, but American seems to have really focused more on London for its partner feed instead of Madrid. Now that changes ever so slightly. It’s even more notable since American is cutting one of its Chicago – London frequencies next summer so it will only have three daily in that market.
We all know that in the US, American loves its southern hubs. Apparently that is spreading into Europe as well with Madrid rising as a hub and the continuing strength of places like Athens and Rome as destinations.
This feels like a worthwhile and conservative move that fits American’s network, but it’s not clear how much growth potential there is for the airline outside of the Americas. It will continue to focus on short-haul and Latin flying, but it seems that we’re likely to just see the airline continue to grow slowly over the oceans.
30 comments on “American’s Muted Summer 2025 Schedule Highlights Three Trends”
I think American originally planned to start using their A321XLRs to add capacity to Europe from the East Coast, but their bigger issue is they want to start using them to pull down the A321Ts they use for upgrade transcons.
They announced yesterday that they intend to use the first ones they get on the transcons next year, and probly don’t expect to see them over the Atlantic til 2026.
Them not having the number of over-water aircraft that DL and UA do is limiting them in European growth in the short term. But they decided it was more urgent to start switching out the A321Ts.
PHL has one of the highest SLA PRASMs in the country, so beefing up Philadelphia made sense.
Only problem with PHL is that, despite being the 9th largest economy in the USA, local demand is quite pathetic.
The problem is that AAs price gouging and poor schedule mean 25-50% of pax will opt to fly from EWR instead.
AA also routes farrrrrr too many pax through DFW/CLT/LHR/DUB/MAD which steals connecting pax from PHL.
And that is just one example of how poorly run American Airlines is. It’s not hard to see how ideas like this can all easily add up to their underperformance
The real issue is that a good portion of PHL’s catchment area overlaps with EWR & their better selection of destinations both domestically & internationally. The closer you are to Merser County, the better EWR looks & once in Middlesex/ Monmouth Counties there’s no contest.
That’s a good point. Many of Philly’s affluent areas are north of the city. With the airport being south of the city and EWR having many more options and more competitive pricing, I could even see most of Bucks County heading to EWR for the occasional transatlantic excursion.
Or even Asia. There are few if any international flights that way without a domestic connection.
Even from Center City, hopping on a train to EWR isn’t bad at all; it’s about an hour (maybe 90 minutes when you factor in AirTrain), compared to 25-30 minutes to PHL on SEPTA or 20 minutes (no traffic) driving/taxi. It doesn’t take much of a better fare or better schedule to make it worth going to EWR.
Not quite sure about Bucks County, everyone I know, including myself use PHL. It’s no more than 60 minutes away on I95 and way more convenient than schlepping up to EWR
Not to mention BWI to the south. Lots of big airports have enormous catchments where it’s worth driving well more than 100 miles to the big city to get a nonstop, but PHL doesn’t. That combined with the fact that its economy is probably a bit smaller and less important than its population would indicate, and it’s not the tourist draw that NYC or WAS are, plus maybe the excellent rail connections to downtown going north, south, and west (at least to Harrisburg) to take away short haul O&D traffic while EWR has better direct airport rail connections for feeding flights, aren’t a recipe for outsize O&D demand.
It all went downhill for Philly after venerable investment firm Duke & Duke went belly up
> Only problem with PHL is that, despite being the 9th largest economy in the USA, local demand is quite pathetic.
Sincere question – what’s the best source for measuring this?
To PHL’s credit when it makes no sense to fly to NYC or WAS, two of the biggest markets in the country, the local demand appears lower.
At the same time it then makes competing for NYC/WAS originating connecting spill traffic tougher.
It’s America West in all but name.
Coffee drinker Coffee thinker..
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I shook Bob Crandals hand at Presidents Conference at LAX. I was a believer till I found out my hearing was wrecked by using little pieces of foam on a string to “protect” my hearing till 1992 when i moved to SJC ” hub “. The state & osha
Forced AA yo give us real ear protection.
They bought Air Cal then striped it of its culture and value. Then Reno Air that had culture but no real value. But it did have MD 80’s & 90’s mostly uncompatable to ours that they bought in Norway that were no longer of value to them. They pumped 10’s of Millions into SJC.. ( also thank the city of San Jose) psych!! We got to watch it slowly shrink smaller, smaller then goodby parties to friends and coworkers. I cleaned planes sometimes on sundays so I grabbed all the real estate sections off the JFK,ORD, MIA and DFW papers i could find. People dug through the trash for more. I was lucky enough to get a coveted SFO part time spot. But as OAK was dissolving I got bumped down 41 notches. After a couple years, I got full time again. Lucky again to clean planes overnight. Then another 2 years back to day/mids. At a Pres conference a couple years later they had a ” special for mechanics only”. Pepfest They were praised and were given the term ” skilled labor” and told fleet service dragged them down. So they got thier own Union within a Union.
But a couple more years later SFO’s 767 overhaul facility went bye bye. (No Tulsa realestate sections from sunday paper where available.) Time frame of the purchase of TWA purchase not clear. The 757’s we got were puposely sabatoged by Cark Ican to be incompatable with whoever was unlucky enough to inherate them. So finally I know there will be critisim of my timelines,spelling and truth.
I have yet to see America West Usair do any better. Mistake after mistake. PHL (domestic term) has been freshened up nice but theres about 16′ wide of walking space ( compared to 25′ to 80′ at hub airports elsewhere) and always dirty, broken down bathrooms at Pigs ear Silk purseville.
My only use for AA now is my pension that
The new owners werent sucessful at stealing in bankruptcy court no matter how hard they tried. And thank goodness we went to court New York VS PHX or DFW!
And a couple times a year I find 12,500 -15,000 mi first class tickets for coast to coast travel on a usually clean as PHL bathroom bottomed out seat. Oh god that felt good to get off my chest!!
The service being reduced on ORD to LHR is AA90 — the daytime flight that leaves Chicago at 8:30am. Many people (myself included) prefer this flight over the red-eye, but it does mean the airplane sits unused overnight at LHR.
With United’s elimination of the daytime flight from DC, it means that the only eastbound same-day transatlantic flights depart from NYC and Boston. (Air Canada operates Halifax to LHR on a 737, and there are a handful flights to the Azores, but neither of those are great for connections.)
If passengers actually prefer daytime flights, then I hope a European carrier sees this as an opportunity. BA, Air France, Aer Lingus, TAP, Iberia. It would require that the route O&D is high enough and there is time to turn the plane for a further eastbound flight to keep utilization up. Perhaps that doesn’t exist, but DC-London-Dubai or something similar might be worth a try.
I suspect that AA has lost some significant traffic off the early morning AA90 (ORD-LHR) because it’s so darned unreliable! I was just looking at this today – and I see it’s operating over 8 hours late, thereby totally negating the benefit of the “day-time flight”. Looking at FlightAware I see lots of significant delays on other days also – it may be worth looking at CF’s crystal ball to see (statistically) just how bad it is.
As for other European operators picking up the day-time opportunities? It will be interesting to see where EI operate their A320neo XLR aircraft. Perhaps a day-time ORD-DUB flight to supplement the A330’s?
Actually, AA 90 has been the best performer this summer. For Jul and Aug it was at 71 percent for arrivals within 14 minutes. Nothing else was above 55 percent.
Thanks for checking Brett – you have really surprised me! I appreciate you checking – thanks again
True, though I hear they really hustle to get it out because if it’s even a few minutes late, it would miss curfew at LHR so they have to delay it by 8 hours. Being stuck at ORD from 08:30-16:30 is a real customer service killer.
I do think AA will remain conservative on long-haul, its also important to note that they are still widebody constrained, and Boeing isn’t particularly reliable for delivery times right now. Most of these adds could be dropped with just rerouting passengers if needed for aircraft availability. Since it looks like several of the frames are expected to come from new 787-9s serving Asia routes.
American has historically been very conservative with international long haul and that’s not likely to change. The shortage of wide bodies, the arrival of new planes, which are more premium heavy, mean it has less to play with.
Although it makes sense being a US carrier – clearly American are focused on the US to Europe market from PHL and not capturing much of the market the other way around. I doubt many Europeans (except a few that may prefer to avoid NYC for connection) would choose to fly to PHL instead of NYC which still has a massive tourist and business pull. Guess they’re just letting DL & UA get on with it in that regard
And for those premium international passengers that know…PHL and CLT are the red-headed stepchildren of AA with ZERO premium ground services, and are to be avoided. It’s simply pathetic. Granted PHL may one year (?) get a Flagship Lounge (wasn’t it ‘started’ in 2019 or something around there), but I wouldn’t hold my breath. AA just doesn’t understand premium passenger dynamics (i.e. it’s an ENTIRE end-to-end experience being paid for), which should hopefully change with the incoming aircraft that have more premium capacity.
American is like fashion. What was once old will eventually become new again. After yet another escape from New York, it’s back to the future with a bunch of Philly transatlantics that probably won’t work because there’s not enough feed or O&D in Philly.
They could conceivably fix the feed issue but are too deathly afraid of harming their golden geese at their, in their mind, better hubs. And with all due respect to Nebraska and Iowa, a couple flights to some random mid continent rectangle states are not going to appreciably increase their feed.
As such, many of these new Philly transatlantics will die on the vine (again) and they can trot out another old, I mean classic, strategy (again) that’s already proven to be a failure. The American motto should be “lather, rinse, repeat.”
With respect, the fact that those other hubs are better is not just in their minds.
Philly doesn’t work great as a hub simply because in the first place, you only have half of the geography you have at the other house. There’s nothing there because of the ocean. And anything west can just as easily go through Charlotte or DFW.
The other hubs also don’t have the traffic issues that the northeast does. Plus fully itself doesn’t have a just a ton of origin and destination, European traffic compared to New York or Boston or Washington.
Philly always will be more of a reliever hug before them than anything else. It’s just much more efficient to go through their bigger hubs.
Philly always will be more of a reliever hug before them than anything else. It’s just much more efficient to go through their bigger hubs.
That is until you can’t for any number of reasons.
Oh I agree that it’s not a very good hub. It’s just funny to watch American go down this road yet again. They’re so out of ideas they are dusting off ideas that have already failed.
People can say what they want about Vasu, at least he was trying some different things. They weren’t all good ideas either but at least they were different!
“….but it seems that we’re likely to just see the airline continue to grow slowly over the oceans.”
American Airlines was delisted from the S&P 500 this week. Of the 4 major U.S. airlines, American is now the only one not listed. Their market cap is only half that of United even though revenues are roughly the same. As their market cap declines, their financial ratios deteriorate. As their financial ratios deteriorate, so do their financing options which are contingent upon maintaining certain financial ratios. Grow slowly is the best case. Shrinking might be more likely.
Bummer re: AA90 — I liked that flight, and it’s been around forever. I wonder if UA would move one of its frequencies (say that horrible 3pm-ish one…) to a morning departure.
Perhaps United will add the morning flight back at IAD. Even if just as a defensive move since BA announced they are going to 3x daily (a record high) unless it was just a total dog. But I would find that hard to believe.
I took AA90 just last Wednesday. I really prefer it going to Europe, because I get to spend a day in London at the start of any Europe trip without falling asleep in my lunch.
They have a morning flight from JFK, which I guess I would take if I didn’t live in bloody Chicago.