American Airlines adds 3 new European destinations in 7-route expansion

American Airlines will add three new destinations in Europe as it gets ready to roll out its 2027 travel schedule.

The additions – Vienna, Austria; Reykjavik, Iceland; Porto, Portugal – were among seven new international routes American announced Thursday.

Elsewhere, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Nice, France – cities American already serves – are each getting service to additional hubs.

And, in the one transpacific route of the expansion, American will restore service from its Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) hub to Tokyo’s Narita Airport (NRT). The carrier had first revealed plans return to Narita from Chicago earlier this summer.

That route matches service that rival United Airlines announced earlier this year.

American’s new international routes for summer 2027

Along with the O’Hare-Tokyo service, American had previously revealed Porto as one of the first European destinations for its new Airbus A321XLR aircraft, which entered service last year. Now, the airline has released the full details of the route, which launches from Philadelphia in March.

‘Route drop’ week

It’s the six European routes that make up the heft of American’s “route drop. It comes just two days after United’s — a high-profile spectacle that included a splashy press event inside a hangar at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR).

United’s reveal included 10 new international routes to an unconventional set of destinations, drawing headlines around the nation.

Delta Air Lines summer 2027 route reveal is yet to come, though it remains to be seen if either it or American can match the buzz United has been able to build for its network updates in recent years.

For Thursday, however, the stage is American’s.

Boeing, Airbus woes creep in

Brian Znotins, American’s senior vice president of network and schedule planning, said his carrier’s announcement would have been much bigger on Thursday if not for issues at both Airbus and Boeing.

Both have struggled to deliver new aircraft on schedule, disrupting fleet plans at airlines around the world.

American has felt the disruptions significantly after the carrier returned several types of planes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, the arrival of new Boeing 787 Dreamliners and Airbus A321neos and A321 XLRs came much slower than expected, limiting American’s long-haul options.

“Boeing and Airbus are really letting us down,” Znotins said.

As of February Znotins expected American to have 13 newly delivered planes to incorporate into the schedule. But only five of those have arrived so far.

“And so, we have a number of routes on the cutting room floor right now that we’re having to defer for a year because of the lack of deliveries we’re getting from our partners at Boeing and Airbus,” he said.

Regardless, the A321XLR is still poised to redraw airline route maps in the coming years. It’s a smaller single-aisle plane, but has a remarkable range that allows U.S. carriers to fly it far into Europe. Couple that with the plane’s small size and lower operating costs, and it opens up a slew of midsize markets that would be difficult to profitably serve with larger widebody jets.

And that’s just what American did, using its newly arrived XLRs to open up service to Nice and Porto – as well as to Vienna.

Evaluating American’s new destinations

Vienna presents American with perhaps the biggest strategic opportunity in Thursday’s route drop.

When flights begin May 6, American is poised to become the only U.S. carrier flying to Vienna.

The last U.S. airline to fly there was Delta Air Lines, which ended that route nearly two decades ago (2008).

Now it will be up to American to make the Vienna service work – along with all the other new routes announced Thursday.

The frequent flyer map

Route planning has become something of an advanced science in the modern aviation industry. Vast amounts of data – market demographics, fare data and demand trends – help airline network chiefs like Znotins and his counterparts at other airlines help predict which new routes are likely to succeed.

Increasingly, however, another factor has crept into the equation: where do frequent flyers want to go with their hard-earned points and miles?

Perhaps that’s no surprise given how much profit the industry mines from those frequent flyer programs – and the cobranded credit cards that support them.

American’s AAdvantage loyalty program is no exception.

“When someone’s buying groceries at their local grocery store, they’re thinking about earning miles on their credit card to fly to Rome,” Znotins said. “People get excited about earning miles and what trips they’re going to take with those miles. That’s something we really benefit from.”

And that’s where Znotin’s team comes in.

“At the end of the day, it is about having a broad variety of destinations for customers to go to,” he said.

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