American adds 2 new routes from its Washington hub

American Airlines is growing its presence in the nation’s capital by adding two new routes.

The carrier is adding service from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) to Eastern Iowa Airport (CID) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Dane County Regional Airport (MSN) in Madison, Wisconsin, beginning June 1, 2023.

The seasonal once-daily flights will operate until Nov. 30, 2023, as first seen in Cirium schedules and later confirmed by a carrier spokesperson.

American plans to deploy the 76-seat CRJ-900 regional jet on each route, operated by fully owned subsidiary PSA Airlines for American Eagle.

While American will become the only carrier flying between Washington and Cedar Rapids, the carrier will go head-to-head against Delta Air Lines' year-round regional jet service from the nation's capital to Madison.

American's new service will give locals looking to visit Washington an additional nonstop connection to the nation’s capital during the summer. Plus, American’s hub at DCA will give travelers plenty of one-stop options for travel throughout the country.

“American is excited to connect Cedar Rapids and Madison with Washington D.C. next summer. We’re eager to offer customers more ways to experience all that Cedar Rapids and Madison have to offer and provide local residents with additional access to American’s global network,” a carrier spokesperson shared in a statement.

To date, American has operated flights to Madison from its hubs in Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia and Phoenix. Meanwhile, American's flights to Cedar Rapids are limited to four hubs: Charlotte, Dallas, Chicago and Phoenix.

Perhaps most interestingly, American is adding routes at DCA, which is one of the nation’s most capacity-constrained airports.

To manage capacity, the Federal Aviation Administration categorizes DCA as a Level 3 airport, meaning that takeoff and landing permissions are administered via slots. There's a fixed limit of 48 operations per hour at DCA by FAA regulation between 6 a.m. and 11:59 p.m.

Each new flight requires a slot pair, and American didn’t remove any flights or cut any routes to or from DCA as part of this week’s schedule load.

It remains to be seen whether American ends up trimming flights elsewhere to free up slots for the two new DCA routes.

Either way, the winners are those headed to or from Cedar Rapids and Madison, as they now have more connectivity from the nation’s largest airline.

Earlier in the pandemic, American added new flights from DCA to Asheville, North Carolina, and Orlando, both of which continue to operate.

All this growth comes nearly two years after the opening of the airport's new Concourse E, which replaced the dreaded Gate 35X shuttle bus operations with a far superior 14-gate concourse.