American Airlines Shifting Its Asia Hub From Los Angeles

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Airlines are constantly looking at ways to save money. I mean, look at all the crazy ways they’ve decreased weight on planes, to save on fuel costs. They also look for untapped ways to increase revenue.

With both of those in mind, American Airlines is moving a bunch of its Asian traffic from Los Angeles to Dallas-Fort Worth. The move is meant to cut costs and improve efficiency.

American has used LAX as its jumping point for planes to go to Asia for decades. However DFW gained a 10% increase in passengers between 2018 and 2019 alone – the most of any international airline. Plus it’s large (about the size of NYC’s Manhattan island) and has much more room for growth than LAX, which is at capacity.

American took that into consideration, as well as:

• About 1/4 of American passengers travel through DFW.
• It increases the possibility of connecting people in the Southeast to Asia
• The three most profitable flights out of DFW fly to or through Asia
• Japan has nearly 250 firms with regional offices located in North Texas, including Toyota North America and 7-Eleven.
• There will be less competition for U.S.-to-Asia flights out of DFW, since so many flights out of LAX go to Asia (of course, less competition means higher prices).
• DFW is cheaper to fly out of than LAX.

American isn’t completely pulling West Coast-to-Asia flights. It has network alliance partners, such as Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, which all fly between LAX and Asia. And it recently began a route between Seattle and Bangalore, India.

“Covid-19 has forced us to re-evaluate our network,” said Vasu Raja, Chief Revenue Officer, American Airlines. “American will have a significantly smaller international network in the year ahead, but we are using this opportunity to hit reset and create a network using the strength of our strategic hubs.”

Reference: Dallas News

Feature Photo: TDelCoro / flickr

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary