American Airlines had made some noise about cutting back on flights into Asia and yesterday, they rolled out what they plan to do to make up for that. Their plan is to go in the other direction – with many new routes into Europe.
This is good news for anyone that likes to visit Europe without having to take a lot of connections to get to the final (and beautiful) destinations that AA now brings to us non-stop.
American Airlines Announces Great Route Plans for Europe
Link: New AA Route Announcement
Here are the new routes that American Airlines has announced for Europe, starting next year.
| Route | Aircraft | Season | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| CLT–MUC* | A330-200 | Begins March 31 | Daily |
| DFW–DUB* | 787-9 | June 6–Sept. 28 | Daily |
| DFW–MUC* | 787-8 | June 6–Oct. 26 | Daily |
| ORD–ATH* | 787-8 | May 3–Sept. 28 | Daily |
| PHL–EDI* | 757 | April 2–Oct. 26 | Daily |
| PHL–TXL* | 767 | June 7–Sept. 28 | Four times weekly |
| PHL–BLQ* | 767 | June 6–Sept. 28 | Four times weekly |
| PHL–DBV* | 767 | June 7–Sept. 27 | Three times weekly |
| PHX–LHR | 777-200 | March 31–Oct. 26 | Daily |
The ones with asterisks are pending government approval.
As you can see, they are really stretching their European reach by including new routes from Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, and even Phoenix. This is great news for everyone that does not want to travel all the way to the East Coast to take European flights out of JFK, Philadelphia, or Charlotte.
These new flights will go on sale August 27, 2018.
The new route changes from American Airlines | Courtesy of American Airlines
Great News on These New Routes!
Their addition of Chicago to Athens is an interesting one since they already have service out of Philadelphia to Athens but that route is a nightmare to find any kind of awards on. Not only that, but the timetable for that flight may not be as good for those that need to connect with flights from the western US. Chicago puts more of those in reach.
The Dallas to Munich gives another German destination from Texas to join their Dallas-Frankfurt route. That is also great news as Munich opens the doors to tons of places around Europe and having that daily for over 4 months will be a help to many.
Finally, I love that they are adding Phoenix to London-Heathrow. That will join the British Airways flight on that route now. Phoenix has been adding some European destinations over the last couple of years and getting an AA flight for those living in and around Phoenix for non-stop service to London is great news.
What About Award Travel?
It should be interesting to see how AA handles the award availability on these new flights. Normally, AA is horrible with their awards, especially business class, to Europe. With the demise of Air Berlin, many AA flyers lost a great option for award flights to Europe. It would be nice to see AA release more space.
My guess is that they will not initially (at least on purpose!) as they will want to sell as many tickets as they can. Initial sales should be pretty good if they advertise this correctly. But some of these seasonal routes stretch into the fall months when many people are not traveling as much because of school. That is good news for those that can because those months can still be beautiful for European travels!
