AA announces more new destinations from LAX

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Expansion Affirms American's Commitment to Los Angeles, Strengthens oneworld's Position at LAX

FORT WORTH, Texas, April 10, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- American Airlines is significantly expanding service from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) this year, further strengthening one of its key hubs and providing more access for customers across its growing global network. In addition to American's new service between Los Angeles and Raleigh/Durham, N.C., which began on April 2, American will begin serving the following new destinations this summer from LAX:

■Eugene, Ore., beginning June 12 (operated by SkyWest Airlines)
■Redmond, Ore., beginning June 12 (operated by SkyWest Airlines)
■Pittsburgh, Pa., beginning Aug. 27
■Indianapolis, Ind., beginning Aug. 27
■Columbus, Ohio, beginning Aug. 27
■Hartford, Conn., beginning Aug. 27
■Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport in Bentonville, Ark., beginning Aug. 27 (operated by American Eagle Airlines)

In February American filed an application with the U.S. Department of Transportation for the right to fly additional United States – Brazil frequencies beginning in 2013. Pending government approval, American intends to use these frequencies to add one new daily round trip service from its Los Angeles hub to Sao Paulo on Nov. 21, expanding the airline's Latin American network footprint. American currently offers more than 900 weekly flights to 49 cities throughout Latin America, including Mexico, Central and South America.

http://hub.aa.com/en/nr/pressrelease/american-airlines-bolsters-its-los-angeles-hub-by-adding-nine-new-destinations-this-year

Nice to see the return to BDL (mainline) and XNA (CR7) and the new service to PIT, IND and CMH which all appear to be mainline. I'm going to guess that they'll be A319 cities.
 
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AA is scheduled to get 10 A319s in the third quarter and five more in the fourth quarter; I think I remember reading that the A319 deliveries begin in July, so that should be plenty of lead time for Aug 27 start dates.
 
No, AA just launched the ORD-DUS service. It was announced months ago, and will be a nice tie-in with Air Berlin, whose largest operation is actually at DUS, IIRC. AB just launched ORD-TXL a few weeks ago, so both of their hubs are now tied into AA quite nicely.
 
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I've heard from people in the training center who say FA quals will begin in June. Haven't heard any details about which bases will fly them first or where.

MK
I just heard May. They are doing "Train the Trainer" as we speak. Just walked by the class today. Also heard DFW first. Since this is AA, until it is announced, who really knows.
 
While the prospect of new service is exciting at any airline, two very important considerations should be kept front and center regarding these new services.

1. Most of these routes have been flown by other carriers at other times. AA is adding a lot of capacity to these routes which will be predominantly point to point but the only way to increase traffic is going to be to decrease fares, something AA cannot afford to do. If other carriers, in some cases low fare carriers, have pulled service on some of these routes, it is hard to imagine that AA with higher costs is going to generate traffic at high enough fares to make these markets work. Many of AA's recent flight adds are in markets where other carriers are either presnt or have flown and pulled back.

2. AA's RASM performance for the month of March was among the lowest among large US carriers. UA jumped to the front but pulled a lot of capacity in order to get their RASM pop. But they also are now running a strong operation which they have not been able to do for some time. B6 also showed strong revenue and stated they benefitted from the Easter shift to March, which traditionally helps airlines. Most of the network airlines said the sequester and US gov't budget problems were bigger issues; since B6 carries less gov't and business traffic, the sequester probably didn't affect them as much. DL got a small RASM bump on flat capacity. US and WN both showed flat RASM but they added capacity. AA had flat RASM and flat capacity.

Given that fuel continues to increase in price and labor costs are going to rise with the merger, AA must show RASM increases in order to return to profitability. Adding new routes which require time for ramp-up to profitability only adds to the challenge.

March quarter profits will be out in the next couple weeks.
 
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World Spectator said:
Most of these routes have been flown by other carriers at other times.

Which LCC's have served any of those markets?

Five of the new routes were flown by either AA, US, or HP.

PIT (previously flown by US v1)
IND (previously flown by US v1 when they had a mini-hub)
CMH (previously flown by HP when it was a hub)
BDL (previously flown by AA, first 737 transcon route in 1999)
XNA (previously flown by AA*, was their longest RJ route for a while)

LAX-RDM and a tag to EUG were both flown by AA* back in late 80's, and Morris flew it at one point as well before the merger with WN.

Other airlines may have served them, but I suspect that the FF base in the former hubs/focus cities of CMH, IND, and PIT
 
Just because a city was once a focus city or hub for an airline doesn't mean the FF base will stay eternally loyal to that airline.

And it still doesn't change the fact that AA will be adding more capacity to those markets than is currently flown which means that AA will have to dilute fares in order to stimulate traffic. If the market was there for nonstop service at the levels that AA is planning, do you not think other carriers would have flown them already, esp. since other carriers have served those routes, including low fare carriers who have lower costs than AA?
 
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Just because a city was once a focus city or hub for an airline doesn't mean the FF base will stay eternally loyal to that airline.

True, but nobody backfilled in any of those locations, so there's a higher chance that there's still somewhat of a base. Airlines do know where their FF's live and fly from, WT... It's a pretty basic part of doing a new route feasibility. US knows which US FF's have been flying UA, and this may be a way of getting some of them back on home metal. But I'm not sure that the two sides can share that kind of information just yet...

If the route planners were just throwing a dart at the map like Hauenstein has been known to do, I'm sure there are much more attractive markets than PIT and EUG...

If the market was there for nonstop service at the levels that AA is planning, do you not think other carriers would have flown them already, esp. since other carriers have served those routes, including low fare carriers who have lower costs than AA?

Which low fare carriers? Second time I've asked...
 
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I've always assumed that the frequent Eagle flights from RDU and BNA to both NYC and DCA had something to do with the former AA hubs at RDU and BNA, two cities that probably still have some AA elites in them.
 
Yes, you have asked about which carriers are involved… and in fact, WN is the #2 or #3 carrier in several of those markets even though they don’t fly them nonstop.
DL is actually the number one carrier in CMH and IND to LAX while UA is #1 in PIT based on the most recent DOT data.

It makes all the sense in the world for AA to try to begin these routes, including that the combined presence in many of these cities of AA plus US SHOULD allow them to gain more strength than they had as individual carriers… that is the whole purpose of the merger.
But it doesn’t change that AA and US have both given up a lot of market strength to other carriers over the past several years and those other carriers are not just going to sit back and allow new AA to take back markets which these carriers have since developed. US walked away from CMH and other carriers stepped in; other carriers are not going to give up what they have developed over the past several years.
You need only look at AA’s decision to start RDU-LAX to see the result: DL added BNA-LAX. Sure, AA might gain some strength in some markets but other carriers will do the same thing… and in the end, new AA is forced to defend itself across even more markets from even more carriers. .they have just upped the ante.
Add in that there aren’t a whole lot of these smaller markets left, and it isn’t long before you start seeing battles for markets like DFW-LAX and LAX-ATL or in AA’s case, key Latin America markets because these competitive attacks will escalate to the most valuable and most vulnerable markets for each carrier.

If new AA destabilizes the industry competitive balance because it now believes it has to catch up for all of the revenue it has lost, it will find that it will be facing the competitive attacks of the entire rest of the industry…. AA/US will still control only about 25% of the industry which leaves 75% of the rest of the industry in the hands of other players.
There are all kinds of indications that AA is ready to come out swinging trying to regain lost share in LAX, NYC, ORD and a whole lot of other places and they are targeting every other carrier. That type of boldness might be commendable in a board game but the odds that AA can succeed in competitive battles in so many arenas in the airline industry are very slim.

And don’t forget that the ability to sustain these competitive battles comes from being profitable, something AA has not demonstrated up this point and US’ profits don’t come close to covering AA’s losses or covering the costs that will be involved in the merger. And AA/US will be taking on huge amounts of debt over the next few years in order to replace aircraft and upgrade the product on top of having to fund these competitive attacks. Again, AA’s RASM growth for the most recent month, even before all of these new market attacks start – was in the bottom tier of the industry.

In football, you call it a hail Mary. It might be the only play you have left but it hardly means that you end up winning…
 
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