With American having stabilized its positions in LA and New York while continuing to build its presence at Chicago and Dallas/Fort Worth, the airline set its sights on growing its reach. American not only opened three hubs from scratch, but it also made a big move into Latin America with both Miami and San Juan rising in importance. Today, we’ll continue the look at American’s 1980s operation thanks to SkyGo data.
As a reminder, the charts are all laid out the same. The lines show the number of departures by airline while the dots are sized depending upon the number of destinations served by that airline from that location. Now, let’s do this.
We will start with a look at the Latin operation which was sparked by the purchase of Eastern’s Latin network in late 1989.
Miami by Airline (1980-1990)
OAG schedule data via SkyGo
Miami was Eastern country, as anyone who grew up in the area back then will remind you. Eastern was just so much bigger than anyone else in its hometown, that it was hard to imagine another airline stepping in. Sure, there was National, but Pan Am bought that airline in 1980 and proceeded to do very little with it until later in the decade. Air Florida came and went quickly, so it was never a lasting threat. In 1987/1988, Eastern hit the height of its market power.
American was just about nothing in this market, but in the latter half of the decade, it saw Eastern and Pan Am both teetering and started to grow. When it bought Eastern’s Latin America routes in late 1989, that was the end of the competition. Sure, Pan Am was up there in 1990 when it was shedding everything else and hoping Latin America would keep it alive. But we know how that ended. By the end of 1991, Eastern and Pan Am were gone, and American reigned supreme.
San Juan by Airline (1980-1990)
OAG schedule data via SkyGo
San Juan wasn’t much for anyone in 1980. Eastern had the biggest presence of a major airline, but the largest carrier by far was a little prop operator named Prinair flying around the Caribbean. Eventually, Prinair and fellow prop-operator Crown Air both died off. Eastern tried to make a run but American wasn’t far behind for long.
When Eastern’s Latin American routes were sold to American, it not only helped in Miami but also in San Juan. This was the beginning of a strategic hub which American kept going for a long time before finally walking away in 2013.
The Latin network was gelling, but American was concerned that it still wasn’t built to capture north-south flow in the domestic market. After all, it had always been an east-west airline, and its main operations were all at the northern and southern edges of the country. And so it was that American embarked on a journey to add three new hubs that ultimately did not last. But at the time this was a bold idea.
Nashville by Airline (1980-1990)
OAG schedule data via SkyGo
Nashville was more of a backwater than anything else in 1980. Surprisingly, Republic was the airport’s largest carrier, but it was passed by USAir in 1981. By 1985, Delta had become a fast-rising number two. But then in 1986, the American hub was born. That was the same year Southwest started flying to the airport.
American grew this hub fast, and that had the effect of pushing Republic (and later Northwest post-merger) to shrink significantly. USAir did the same, even after acquiring Piedmont. Delta fell into the number two spot by default by the end of the decade, though it had stopped growing. American never really had any competition here, though its efforts in Nashville — which were later abandoned — set the stage for this to become one of Southwest’s biggest and fastest-growing stations.
Raleigh/Durham by Airline (1980-1990)
OAG schedule data via SkyGo
If RDU seems like it came out of left field… it did. Eastern was the largest airline in the market followed by Piedmont, but neither were particularly large. By the middle of the decade, Piedmont did make a move to grow, but it wasn’t until 1985 that American even served this market at all. When it entered, it entered big.
The hub really got going in 1987 as Eastern was continuing to weaken. Piedmont and then acquirer USAir maintained a steady presence, but it wasn’t any match for American’s hub operation which nobody challenged until American itself walked away and Midway tried to fill the gap. Today, it’s a smörgåsbord of airlines fighting it out, but one surprising winner is Breeze which in many months sees RDU as its largest operation.
San Jose by Airline (1980-1990)
OAG schedule data via SkyGo
Unlike RDU, American had served San Jose at the dawn of the decade, but it didn’t have much there. AirCal was the big dog in the market followed closely by PSA. It was mostly regional flying in the west that dominated this airport. Republic was a surprising third… surprising only until you remember that this was a product of the merger with Hughes Airwest.
This hub was not organically grown. American bought AirCal and USAir bought PSA. At the time, it was a two-horse race, but American focused on San Jose while USAir backed away. United had picked up some slack after commuter WestAir began flying under the United Express banner, but nothing competed with American. That hub died, was resurrected by Reno Air, bought again by American, and then finally dismantled for good in the early 2000s. It’s now Southwest territory.
If we zoom out and look at American in 1980 vs 1990, it’s a completely different airline. Sure, the core of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Dallas/Fort Worth are there, but that’s about it. In 1980, the airline’s fifth largest station by departures was St Louis. By 1990, not only had American built its Latin network centered around Miami, but it also established three new hubs in Nashville, Raleigh/Durham, and San Jose for north-south service.
This wasn’t just about the network. American had gone from an airline flying B727s as the backbone of its fleet to newer and efficient MD-80s… airplanes which were flown by cheaper labor on B-scale wages for new hires. It also built a regional network buzzing with feed from small aircraft. During that decade, it created the AAdvantage program, and it became the godfather of modern revenue management.
This was an airline firing on all cylinders. It was an airline with leadership under President Bob Crandall (who also became CEO in 1985) that was unbeaten. Not everything worked, but that was ok. It moved fast, it made bold changes, and it came out transformed as one of the largest and most important airlines in the world by the time 1990 arrived.
