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.
