While investigating award possibilities for an upcoming trip to Europe, I was quite surprised to discover that AA only flies ORD-JFK non-stop once per day.

What tipped me off to this is that I was looking at awards LSE-ZRH, but kept getting options that forced me to change airports in the NYC area (i.e. from LGA/EWR to JFK). On further investigation, I discovered the reason was only 1x per day.

Is this normal, that AA would only have one flight per day connecting a hub to a non-stop international route? I guess most of their business on the JFK-ZRH flight must be in/out of NYC area, which would make sense since both are financial sectors. Still, surely some must want to connect?

So, now I'm trying to figure out if there's any way to make it from LSE-ZRH in two stops & without a change of airports (the ORD-JFK leg doesn't ever seem to be available for awards). So far, I'm coming up dry- there doesn't seem to be any connections within Europe on AA from any of their other gateways. I'm guessing the only way would be if there is an itinerary on a partner airline, departing ORD to their European gateway, connecting to ZRH.