American tweaks domestic network with route cut, 4 new flights

American Airlines may be busy boosting its long-haul network, but it's also making some tweaks to its domestic operations.

The Fort Worth-based carrier filed plans over the weekend to slash a domestic route and add four others, as first seen in Cirium schedules and later confirmed by a carrier spokesperson.

American will exit the 667-mile route between Chicago and Columbia, South Carolina, effective Jan. 8, 2025. The airline has only operated this route since July 2023, so it has seemingly not been able to fill its 50-seat regional jets in this market.

Though Columbia will lose a key link to American's Chicago hub, American will continue flying to this outstation (where it is the largest carrier) from several other hubs, including Charlotte, Dallas, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

For locals trying to get to Chicago, United Airlines will have a monopoly as the only carrier offering service to Chicago going forward — which might not be great news for fares in this market.

"As part of a continuous evaluation of our network, American has made the difficult decision to discontinue service between Columbia, SC (CAE) and Chicago (ORD). American will continue to offer service from CAE to five cities across the U.S.," the airline said in a statement.

While the cut will certainly sting for locals, American is making some exciting additions at other airports across the country.

It starts with a new year-round daily service from Los Angeles to Columbus, Ohio. This flight will take off March 6, 2025, and American will enjoy a monopoly on the route.

Interestingly, Spirit Airlines was flying this route, but the ultra-low-cost carrier plans to discontinue it early next year. American seems to think there's still enough demand to fill a 172-seat Boeing 737-800 in the market, so we'll see how the flight performs starting in the spring. (American last operated this route from 2013 until April 2020, at the outset of the pandemic.)

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U.S. Department of Transportation data analyzed by Cirium shows that, on average, about 150 daily passengers flew on Spirit from LA to Columbus last year; the average gross fare was $121.

About 130 daily passengers connected on other airlines from LA to Columbus. Assuming these demand trends hold, the odds are in American's favor to fill its jets.

Flights will depart LA at 9:20 a.m. and land in Columbus at 4:55 p.m. They'll return from Columbus at 5:45 p.m. and arrive at 7:30 p.m.

"American is excited to welcome customers on our new nonstop service between Columbus and Los Angeles," Jordan Pack, American's director of domestic network planning, said in a statement. "Los Angeles joins a lineup of eleven other nonstop destinations from Columbus on American, giving customers convenient and robust access to our comprehensive global network of more than 350 destinations with just one stop."

In addition to the new Columbus service, American will also add three limited-time domestic routes from Boston Logan International Airport (BOS). These services will all operate in February during the peak spring break period.

The airline will fly from Boston to Orlando and Fort Myers, Florida, on Feb. 14, 15, 16, 21, 22 and 23.

Meanwhile, the carrier is preemptively adding more flights to the Super Bowl, which will be in New Orleans next year. The airline will fly from Boston to New Orleans on Feb. 6 and 7, and it'll offer two flights back to Boston on Feb. 10.

While adding one-off Super Bowl flights is quite typical for U.S. airlines, major network carriers don't usually add limited-time flights for peak demand periods. Perhaps American has excess domestic capacity in the winter that it wants to strategically deploy, or the carrier might be testing the waters to see about launching these routes for a longer duration.

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