ANC-PHX
 

Per the OAG thread on a.net, AA is knocking ANC-PHX down to seasonal. Sadly I am not surprised...even though that route dates all the way back to HP, AA has never had any inclination to treat ANC as anything but a summer cruise-tour pit stop, despite inheriting successful year-round routes in the past from QQ and now US.

Anyway...this might be a nice opportunity for AS to beef up its winter service on that route.

Wow. I took that flight all the time on HP/US between 7 and 11 years ago. The only direct flight to ever lose my luggage, never to be found.

The positive spin is that AA has a partner with excellent, year-round service to Alaska (with the state's name on their planes!), something US/HP never had.

If it was truly a "successful" route (i.e. highly profitable), I am convinced that AA would not discontinue it. AA tends to make every route stand on its own. If it is not at least marginally profitable (or of high strategic value to AA), it will be discontinued.

I suspect the AS partnership was as much of a reason as anything. US never had that.

We don't know how successful it was. Or perhaps it was successful before, but it's not now.

Some of US's flows via PHX may now be going via DFW or ORD, which would put downward pressure on routes.

Sometimes a larger route network is not necessarily a good thing.

for a particular flight.

If AA can't make DFW-ANC or ORD-ANC work year-round, hard to see that PHX-ANC would work.