IMHO-PHL may have lots of destinations, but my experience DFW-PHL-TATL is:

Security- F-

Ground and GA- D to A+ (a roll of the dice)

In-flight- B-A++

If it were me, I hang out at JFK/LGA for as long as I could.

YMMV.

There's so little PHL-TATL O&D that those captive passengers aren't going to save yields. There's lot of competition against xxx-PHL-EU. There are lots of airports in the East and Upper Midwest with decent TATL non-stop offerings. Business travelers will favor those.

I would think the cuts would mean that JFK would be focused even more on O&D, with more connections going over PHL, further reducing the need for regional feed. But of course it's not that simple; cutting JFK-ZRH doesn't magically make AA able to fill a JFK-FCO plane with O&D traffic.

Someone elsewhere pointed out that the LCCS (Norwegian etc) are starting to eat into yields on the big city routes, but they don't compete in the one-stop markets, so network carriers have an advantage there; that would be consistent with a focus on the less-constrained connecting hub with much more feed (PHL). Dunno how much that plays into this. Does anyone more knowledgeable know?

thats true except for the diehards who only want AA or OW and avoid BA due to the extra $$$. So Im out West and want to hit VCE. sure there are a bunch of ways connecting either in the US and ns to VCE (DL,UA) or any European carrier to their hub and connect onwards. But if I want to earn AA EQMs or RDMs or hope an Upgrade clears AA metal is what I need to be on. As for Biz folks I dont think VCE,BUD or PRG are Biz centers

For those of you that complained the flagship lounge at JFK was too crowded.. i guess this is one potential solution.

Curious about the DEN at JFK. Not sure if it's for international connections or just to sit on slots. It's in the LGA perimeter.

Overall, the PHL adds are great for PHL & AA. AA needs a connecting transatlantic hub to compete against UA at EWR. Less great for NYC based flyers, but all the smaller northeast cities to Europe, it's a great location and avoids the backtracking of ORD/DFW.

In terms of international connections - PHL along with CLT and DFW are some of the better options. JFK - very problematic if you need to change to LGA and connect there. ORD - arrivals at T5 and need to take a train to the terminal. LAX has improved with the TBIT connector - but lacks a pre-check checkpoint.

I don't see AA 'cutting back' at LGA/JFK. They may continue to reconfigure what routes they fly, as they have done a couple of times at LGA since the merger, but the slots are so valuable, and the market so important, I see, at most, more moves of slots from City A to City B to City C to find the best profitably.

Forgive the nitpick, but DEN is technically outside the 1500-mile perimeter, it is just an exception to the perimeter rule (the other exception being Saturday flights).

I would be quite surprised if DEN is not times for TATL connections.

Has DL announced that they're cutting PHL-CDG? I still see it on Google flights.

I'm sure DL's PHL-CDG will remain, and probably even do a bit better once it no longer has to compete with DL's placeholder (until they get the slot permanently) abysmally performing PHL-LHR.

They did fly JFK-BUD for a short time just before Malev went under.

http://visitbudapest.travel/articles...t-to-budapest/

Yep, our flights got canceled, but we made lemonade :D

who says you cant learn new things everyday, had no idea that AA actually flew to BUD. But during that time period a number of European carriers pulled all their long haul flights, Czech Air, Olympic are 2 off the top of my head. Also Sabena but Brussels Air has come back with a few

Nor that DL did PHL-CDG, I think they have 1 or 2 Intl flights as well out of EWR

It was short-lived. Malev joined OW, AA launched BUD, Malev went under, AA dropped BUD. No idea if the flight was doing well enough to survive if Malev had survived, but without Malev it is pretty quickly pulled.

DL is the antithesis of AA when it comes to launching routes from non-cornerstone US cities (to use old AA management language that is clearly still in force with new AA management language) Just looking at TATL:

PHL-LHR (this is slot squatting, something DL gained from the AA merger DOJ settlement. They get to drop PHL-LHR next year and keep the LHR slot for whatever use they want).
PHL-CDG (seasonal)
PIT-CDG (seasonal)
RDU-CDG (AA does have RDU-LHR of course, one of the few cornerstone exceptions)
EWR-CDG
EWR-AMS
BOS-CDG (arguable that BOS is a DL hub, though language on that varies)
BOS-AMS
BOS-LHR
PDX-AMS
PDX-LHR
MCO-AMS (launching 2018)

DL even runs special international sections sometimes, such as a few days of NRT-LAS during CES in LAS and, in 2018, 4 days of AUS-AMS flights for SXSW.

And that's just TATL (except NRT-LAS of course :) not domestic point to point routes that DL also adds. DL is has a very different route planning business approach than AA.

Yep.

BA has been wanting to redo their T7 @ JFK, I think B6 wants to build a new term, so if AA does enough cutbacks Im wondering if BA would simply move into AAs T8 and let B6 have the footprint of T7 and the old T6 (which they now use as a parking area) to build a new Term maybe with CBP to handle its Intl flights they now have , as well as European flights should they enter that mkt. along with IB going into T8

No one