Speculation: Will AA continue to pull back in NYC?
 

I'm only about a year into flying primarily American out of NYC (switched from DL), but after the recent transatlantic cuts, I'm now wondering if AA is going to pull back domestically as well. Most of my flights on AA are

JFK to LAX/SFO transcon
Shuttle flights (LGA to BOS, ORD, DCA)
LGA to ATL (great for upgrades)
LGA to CLT to X (good for reaching small southern cities)
JFK to EGE
LGA/JFK/EWR to AA hubs (PHX, DFW)
JFK to LHR

I like AA's JFK terminal, and most of my LGA flights are out of Terminal C, which is nice enough.

It seems like AA should be competitive on a lot of these types of routes. However, based on conversations with business colleagues, AA continues to be viewed poorly by a lot of business travelers, and Delta seems to be dominating more and more. Choosing to fly transcons out of PHL versus JFK seems ominous. Obviously you can connect out of PHL if necessary, but that seems backwards.

Longer term, will AA be competitive in NYC?

Today's news answers that question.

Funny, most of my flights out of LGA/JFK also are to those cities (plus CDG). For European travel, though, we often find ourselves connecting through LHR (like our upcoming trip to LIS via LHR). I'm actually quite happy with the current options, though am concerned about the reduction of the CDG flights from 2-1/day. And with PHL so close, it would be nice to have more frequent (and affordable) flights between LGA/JFK and PHL.

To put a point to it:
1) Do you anticipate additional international route cuts?
2) Do you anticipate reductions in domestic flights or routes?

After AA's investment in the Flagship Lounge at JFK, I'm not sure why they would pull back so much.

Since the merger was announced, I always believed AA would eventually focus its northeast hub and TATL gateway on PHL. Looks like USdbaAA continues the merger tradition of eliminating a hub, and JFK is the odd one out.

Relative to big terminal makeovers (see what's being spent at LAX and LGA, or the Skylink at DFW) and carrier operating revenues, Flagship Lounges are very small investments.

Let's see if today's announcement is just a little trimming, or the unfolding of something big and strategic.

Assuming AA maintains its JFK Flagship A321T transcon service, the Lounge should survive.

If AA continues to fly to LHR from JFK (and I see no reason why that would go away), they need to offer a similar lounge product to what BA offers out of T7. Also, the SFO/LAX service offers an intl F product. Moreover, J passengers will now have access to the FL. And AA also flies from JFK to BCN/MAD/CDG/FCO/DUB, in addition to MXP and EDI (which may or not go away). Don't forget that AA also flies to South America from JFK.

But AA doesnt fly JFK-PRG,BUD or VCE nor do I recall them ever doing so. So its when starting up new service they are doing so from its hubs other then JFK. DL flys to PRG and VCE from JFK.

AFAIK only BA,LH and QR have flights into PHL and 1 a piece. So although JFK may have the #s , PHL probably will allow much higher yields as there isnt any competition or LCCs to drive the fares down, and the flights will be seasonal

It should, wasnt it Kirby who said it was a big mistake for UA that it pulled out of the Transcon biz from JFK, so even with DL and B6 and now AS I think AA has a good chunk of the LAX/SFO-mkt

AS?

Well, Alaska Air Group (VX). But given AA's small economy cabins on the A321 and markedly different product up front, AA and AS/VX may be competing for quite different segments of the JFK-LAX/SFO market.

I must say I do find the JFK cutback strategy a bit surprising. I get the whole argument that it's tough to build a competitive TATL network at JFK against DL and UA (EWR), so if you can't compete at scale then cut back.

However, it's clear that NYC-based premium O&D is crucial to both AA and the AA/BA joint business. That's why so much effort is put into JFK-LHR and JFK-LAX/SFO. But those crucial NYC premium flyers/firms don't just use those routes, they also do business in other key points in Europe such as AMS, FRA, ZRH. Now if they can't get to such places direct from NYC with AA and instead have to faff with connections, why put their NYC-LHR/LAX/SFO eggs in the AA basket at all? Why not just stick them in the much broader DL basket?

I realise this point has been made many times on this forum. I also appreciate AA has thought long and hard about it and knows an awful lot more about its markets than I do. And yet intuitively, it still feels like a questionable strategy.

to me AS will always be Alaska and VX Virgin Am, dont know why they took VX over AS But remember till now VXs planes didnt have lie-flats, so they could have the best service in the air and coolest cabins, that and $2.75 gets me onto the NYC Subway. and if you sat in coach and kept your eyes closed you would have thought you were on any of the carriers flying Transcon

For what you are flying, AA should be perfectly fine. None of those routes are in jeopardy and AA is simply trimming international routes to non-OW hubs and domestic routes that are to very small cities. The EGE flight should stay as well because it is a seasonal route to an expensive ski town. Ticket prices on this route are astronomically high.

This is a separate question. The short answer is kind of. For the business traveller who flies primarily to major business centers, then the answer is yes it will. However, for those of us who fly all over or go to medium to smaller cities, then the answer is no. I am surprised to see MAN go because of the strong BA frequent flyer base in Manchester. I would not be surprised to see MXP and seasonal FCO go, but that would be all the remaining Europe I could see being cut. I think the South American cities will stay because of LATAM's presence. I think some of the Caribbean cities go, as they already cut San Juan and that has the highest O&D. I am curious what they will do with the Eagle flights from JFK. They are used for feed, but if they cut the international flights without feed on the other end, how much feed do they really need?

As for LGA, I could definitely see some cuts. CHO, ROA, ILM, and BGR come to mind.

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

Actually first class on the A321T (JFK - LAX/SFO) is equivalent to international J. It would be cool if AA installed the flagship first suite (found on the 77W) on the A321T. :D

To be fair, every one of those DL flights is to a DL hub. They list CDG and AMS as hubs and have for a long time, dating back to the 90s in the case of AMS (NW), if I remember correctly. Certainly the DL/AF/KLM joint venture is much more willing to have the US partner operate flights that aren't out of the US hubs than the AA/BA/IB joint venture (or, I think, the UA/AC/LH one, though I know far less about their routes), but PIT-CDG etc are still hub-spoke flights.

PDX-LHR is a bit different because LHR isn't a connecting hub (at least not to Europe) for DL, but it's still a flight operated to a metal neutral joint venture hub.

BA handles the non-hub USA flying for the most part, just as AA handles the non-hub EU flying for the most part (save for Open Skies, but that's just one citypair).

Not really.

I thought a BA move to T8 was part of the plan - they certainly have the land area to expand the terminal. In fact the east wall of T8 has always had the look of a temporary wall.

If I have the wall you are referring to correct, at 1 time there was AA T8 and UA T9 (or vice versa). When they rebuilt T8 they ended up leaving most of the footprint of the old T8 empty and use it as a parking area , just as B6 does with the old T6 area

But if AA down sizes enough (seems they will do so) then no extension will be needed as T8 today should be able to handle everything, with BA and IB probably using the gates located out onto the field due to the size of their aircrafts

the renters @ T7 will either go to T1 or T4 DL should knock down T2 and build a new term where T2 & 3 stood as well, with a walkway to T4 they use but try to get as many flights into a new term as they can, a DL Worldport. T2 is a hole

What is the total annual PHL-TATL O&D?

B6 has the rights to build on the space where T6 was located. They recently announced they are going to expand T5 into the T6 area but want more slots for more flights to utilize new gates. I have never understood why BA never moved into T8. It is a really nice terminal and it would make connections much easier. Same goes for IB, CX, and OpenSkies. BA should take the money they would invest in a renovated T7 and use it to build a couple more gates past 14/16 at T8.

Not sure about the total annual PHL-TATL O&D, but I have some figures for some routes.

PHL-LHR: ~210 PDEW
PHL-CDG: ~90-95 PDEW
PHL-FCO: ~90 PDEW
PHL-FRA: ~85 PDEW
PHL-DUB: ~50-55 PDEW
PHL-MAN: ~50 PDEW
PHL-MAD: ~50 PDEW

Every other city is below 50. Of course, it varies based on the time of year and I do not know the month by month numbers, but it is not a lot. For a simple comparison, NYC-ZRH, which is getting cut for PHL-ZRH, has ~18x more O&D traffic.

Although AA flies the A321T to SFO, and they have the best hard and soft product of any airline on the route, they're only barely making an effort at competing. Today was a typical Friday where they had just four flights, with the latest scheduled to depart at 5:30pm. This isn't doable if working a full day in NYC, and many weekends see just three flights. These schedules just aren't competitive with DL or B6, or of course UA if EWR works (as it does for many in Manhattan).

Because you can be curb to gate in T7 in 5 minutes...not happening at T8.

T7 also much nicer post-renovation, with IMO better F&B options.

IIRC BA also owns T7 and thus has control over what they want to do w/it...guessing they would lose that w/T8.

If you're not in CX F, IMO while the BA lounges in T7 aren't great, they're still better F&B-wise than their T8 counterparts (though less well lit).