Originally Posted by electronicmaji

As far as I am aware the Miami terminal is limited on how many more flights can be added. AA has expanded routes served from MIA within the Continental US significantly and Terminal D is a complete nightmare in terms of traffic currently with both International and National flights served from said terminal and massive amounts of international flights coming in from the Carribean, Central and Northern South America daily. The wait times for luggage and even just plane parking at MIA are massive. I regularly see delays of 30+ minutes on both going through and making international to national connections from South America.

There is very little capacity to serve more flights from South America with the current infrastructure AA has at Miami and the other terminals are taken by other airlines. The amount of flights coming through MIA has expanded drastically and other airlines are taking over more and more space and bringing in more and more flights. LATAM with it's recent partnership with Delta and it's direct flights from several locations from South America through Miami and Delta's expansion of domestic flights from MIA are also taking up area in the MIA terminals.

I don't see AA being able to fly to more South American destinations from MIA unless they break out into another terminal or another terminal being built which are not in the plans as far as I am aware.

Beyond that inbound traffic to the US from Brazil has become quite soft compared to the past and traffic and number of flights moving through PTY and BOG has increased greatly, with the latter now making up the second biggest airport in terms of air traffic in all of Latin America after MEX. A lot of traffic heading to Brazil from the US is now making a connection at one of those two airports.

You also have to understand that right now traffic to the US from a lot of these South American countries is either holding steady or decreasing and traffic to Europe is exploding. BOG-MAD is going to be the highest served transoceanic route in 2024 in Latin America with the most traffic as LATAM and Plus Ultra add the route it will achieve 10-12 daily flights served by 5 different Airlines and 1.8m seats available.

Also you need not forget the expansion that Delta has made in the region; serving quite a few more destinations in South America directly to their ATL hub; with connection schedules that often make more sense than the MIA connection schedules you'll deal with flying AA. Delta is also treating their South American customers a lot better than AA ever has. Need it not be forget that the people who fly from South America to the US tend to make up the higher classes of society in Latin America and are used to receiving much better treatment domestically from their flagship airlines; then what they receive from United and AA who had most of the control of the routes going into South America for a long time. If Delta were to try to compete more directly with AA on more of their routes going into ATL or MIA I think they'd eat AA's lunch here for quite a few reasons.