TravellingChris

What's with the major atrophying of AA's network to South America out of MIA? Its coverage was once second to none, but it has shed no less than 16 destinations since 2005. Paramaribo was cut last year. Santa Cruz, La Paz, Asuncion, Manaus and Brasilia are among the other destinations given the chop earlier.

Caracas I get, since the country is a basket case. But the other destinations are more difficult to understand.

Herb687

Supply and demand?

What are the other 9 South American destinations cut?

On the plus side of the ledger, I think CTG and ADZ (seasonal?) were added in the past 5 years or so.

Can any of AA's current aircraft operate out of LPB carrying an economic payload all the way to MIA or was that one cut due to nothing in the fleet with the performance of the 757?

TravellingChris

Belo Horizonte
Salvador
Curitiba
Recife
Campinas
Cordoba
Maracaibo
San Andres
Porto Alegre

Herb687

Interesting. Isn't ADZ coming back seasonally? I was looking at going there and thought I saw flights.

As for the rest of your supplemental list, none (save CNF?) were longstanding AA destinations. It is interesting that AA axed these routes but none of them (excluding CNF) had been around for very long.

M60_to_LGA

I don't have the answer either, but AA's entire international network has atrophied over the years. In Europe they've shed a lot of service, I think partly because they now rely mostly on selling tickets on BA or other OW partners rather than booking travelers on their own metal.

Looking at Wikipedia's page on AA destinations, it seems they only have 11 year-round routes to Europe currently. They've abandoned Brussels, every airport in the UK other than LHR, Stockholm, Helsinki, Shannon, Reykjavik... they're clearly not even trying to be a first-tier player in Europe at all. Same goes for Asia - they cut service to all Japanese airports except for Tokyo and abandoned TPE and HKG.

I assume the same logic applied to South America. Most of the destinations they left weren't high-volume routes and presumably didn't have huge amounts of business demand. And until recently, they had the option of routing passengers onto LA flights.

There are lots of threads on here trying to determine what AA's strategy actually is, and no one seems to have a handle on it. As far as I can tell, they're focusing mostly on the places your average upper-middle-class business or leisure traveler in the US South might want to go. So, they're keeping extensive coverage across the Southeast US, the main global business destinations, and then mostly leisure destinations in close reach such as Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. They've also slashed their service from NYC and Chicago, which used to be huge hubs (in the case of ORD, on par with UA's).

So yeah, AA does seem to be a bit of a mess.

vasantn

It's a bandwidth issue. They're too busy hawking credit cards.

elhumano

In fairness, they are better at making money hawking credit cards than they are at flying.

Antarius

The lack of 763s and 752s has hurt AA. They were perfect for Curitiba, Porto Alegre etc. They don't have a good replacement.

AA is short on wide bodies right now. Something has to give.

SJOGuy

AA pulled out of Paraguay years ago when the government there began mandating a 5% commission be paid to travel agents. ASU was always a connecting flight on AA metal from its MIA-GRU-MIA service. You never officially entered Brazil at GRU. AA returned in 2012 with four-time weekly 757 non-stop service from MIA. That lasted about two years. Despite talk of bringing ASU back to AA's route network seasonally, it never happened.

Work has taken me to Paraguay several times. I love the place. If you're not from neighboring Brazil or Argentina, you're still enough of a novelty that they make a big fuss over you.

M60_to_LGA

Really? I was there once, and no one seemed that interested in me. Now I feel undesirable.

Asunción is a pleasant enough city. I had come by bus through the Chaco after a couple of weeks of semi-roughing it in Bolivia, so the city seemed like a paradise to me at that point. The botanic gardens were quite lovely. Some nice museums and historic sites. I really loved the Jesuit ruins at Trinidad and Jesús.

IggySD

That was a choice though wasn’t it? Didn’t AA retire a bunch of frames just prior / during the pandemic with no replacement plans? Other airlines have brought them back but there seems to be a culture at AA that makes it impossible to admit a mistake.

jerrychuang

Indeed fleet shortage seems to be the problem. My impression is that AA strategized to pull many widebodies from international routes to "profitable" domestic rotations, especially Hawaiian routes starting 2021 but never put those aircraft back once the demand picked up again since a lot of capacities are retired early into COVID.

MrAndy1369

Might be an unpopular question, but do you think this is because of the merger, or was AA a mess even pre-merger?

ESpen36

Loss of the 757s hurt in the medium-haul, "long and thin" Latin American markets, many of which are also "hot and high" (meaning hot climate and high elevation, which affects lift at takeoff). The 757s had a huge amount of engine thrust relative to common takeoff weight, allowing them to operate with full loads of fuel, pax, and cargo out of airports in the region with shorter runways and at higher elevations. The replacement 787s are often too much capacity for these secondary cities...not enough cargo or pax demand to fill them on a regular basis. AA's A321s have the range, but I believe are not configured for this type of flying (although they are used for West Coast to Hawaii, which requires ETOPS certification).

Another factor might be a shortage of qualified pilots to work those routes. There are a bunch of destinations in Central/South America with extreme terrain on approach and/or departure, requiring specialized pilot training/procedures. A lot of experienced pilots took early retirement or buy-out offers during covid. The industry is struggling to hire pilots right now.

M60_to_LGA

The merger was a long time ago. All I know is that for most of the past decade-plus, both their hard and soft product have been generally subpar compared to the other US legacy carriers. Pre-covid, AA was very hit-or-miss, with some flights on very nice, new planes and others on ancient ones that were just embarrassing. Since covid, I've found both DL and UA to consistently offer a better experience.