An American Airlines Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner lands on the Miami International Airport on December 10, 2021 in Miami, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
American Airlines is reviving a few of its pre-pandemic destinations like Prague and Budapest, Hungary, as international travel continues to carry up higher than domestic demand.
Other additions include its first-ever Dallas Fort Price International flights to Athens, Greece, and year-round nonstop service between Miami and Milan.
American can be extending service for next 12 months’s World Cup, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Dallas and between Dallas and Zurich, where soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is predicated,. Those flights will run from May 21 to Aug. 4 of next 12 months, a bid for more business travel and sports tourism.
Brian Znotins, American’s senior vice chairman of network and schedule planning, told CNBC that the airline saw high numbers of shoppers from Argentina travel to Doha, Qatar, through the 2022 World Cup and that he expects much more to travel to the 2026 World Cup, which will probably be played in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
He also said the airline is expanding its Europe service in a bet that customers would relatively connect in a U.S. hub like Dallas or Charlotte, North Carolina.
“We took a fresh have a look at where the demand hotspots are in Europe and we proceed to see strength in Italy and Greece,” Znotins said. “We proceed to see high numbers of travelers connecting in Europe to get to places like Rome and Athens,” so the airline is adding more options from U.S. hubs.
With Prague and Budapest service from American’s hub at Philadelphia International Airport, he said many shoppers already fly into one city and out of the opposite for Danube River cruises and other tours.
American’s unit revenue for domestic flights within the last quarter fell 6.4% from 2024, while trans-Atlantic revenue rose 5%.
Lots of American’s summer routes were discontinued due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but Znotins said the changes weren’t only a return to that period.
“We have redesigned the complete airline based on today’s demand environment and never some desire to get back to 2019,” he said. “All the pieces has modified.”
American will use Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners for all the brand new flights apart from Zurich to Dallas, which will probably be flown by Boeing 777-200s.
