AA Adding Boston-London Heathrow Flights
 

American will introduce an evening non-stop to LHR next March with an early morning return flight. (It is also increasing the frequency of service from MIA to Lima, Santiago, and São Paulo).

The LHR service will operate using 777-200ER aircraft with 37 business-class seats and 24 seats in premium.

Source: American Airlines to Add Boston-London Service, Increase Frequencies on 3 South American Flights



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First response to LATAM for South American routes and going after Delta in Boston for European head to head competition.

Where are the aircraft coming from?

The battle of BOS has begun, with an added skirmish related to DL's investment and partnership with LATAM.

Where are the LHR slots coming from?

A welcome response from American, as long as the additional routes are not announced via another annoying commercial featuring Vasu Raja.

Yet another flight to LHR, between AA and BA there must be 20 a day.....can’t AA find another profitable destination?

Fine. We'll take some in BOS and NY can loose a few. Wish they were bringing back the daytime flight...

From the little I understand about airline margins, probably not. The major tourist destinations are probably covered and low yield, while LHR gives them the full BA network. So on the flip side, the more LHR flights they offer, the fewer connections to European destinations we need to undertake (staying in OW).

Is it possible this was already in the works before the DL announcement? I would imagine that a big, lumbering bureaucracy like a major global airline would need more than one week to put new international routes into place, no? (Serious question - I actually have no idea, but it takes longer than that for my freaking company to order coffee.)

My guess is that the new BOS flights were planned long ago and the only question was how to time the announcement for the best PR value. DL's plans to expand significantly at BOS have been well known, although of course DL withheld details until last week's ceremony.

LATAM seems to have been a surprise, although perhaps AA had already been thinking about contingency plans for a number of scenarios so that the brainstorming and a lot of the analysis had already been done to cover various potential decisions by AA's major competitors. I would expect a well managed company to engage in such long term strategic thinking.

and not a C1 to be found anywhere.

:rolleyes:

My first question as well.

As a Boston based flyer return of BOS-LHR by own metal is welcome news. With BA flying LHR-BOS 4 daily there will be 5 daily between BOS-LHR.

Since AA consolidated operation at BOS at LUS side of Terminal B, I heard it is possible that AA does not have wide body capable gates at BOS. Guess that is not true if BOS-LHR will be operated by 772, not 757 or A321LR. :p

So what's AA's excuse? :D