Airlines change their route maps all the time. They’ll add routes to cities they’re focusing on and remove unprofitable flights. You’ll see flights added to hubs that are increasingly important and eliminated from airports that have less strategic significance.
Airlines will change airports due to mergers which make certain flights redundant. For example, American Airlines and JetBlue both removed flights that overlapped because of their Northeast Alliance. Now that deal has been overruled by the courts, it will be interesting to see which routes each airline brings back.
What does this matter to travelers?
All travel is personal and when an airline starts flying to your home airport, it’s a big deal. For example, Hawaiian Airlines flew non-stop from Honolulu to Orlando when international travel to Hawaii was limited. We took advantage and booked a flight home from Hawaii using HawaiianMiles. Hawaiian Airlines has since done away with that route as they can better use that aircraft to fly passengers back and forth from Japan.
Another flight was just announced which might change our strategy for two airlines.
It’s no secret that Austin, TX is a focus city for Delta Air Lines where it wants to gain a large presence. They’ve built a large Delta Sky Club at the airport with an outdoor SkyDeck at the end of the expansion of the main terminal.
We travel to Austin a couple times a year as it’s the closest airport to Schlitterbahn Waterpark. Until recently, the only choices for flying to Austin from Orlando were Southwest, Spirit, American, and Allegiant (the latter was from Sanford Airport, which is about 45 minutes from us. MCO is about 15 minutes from our house).
Currently, flight times for Spirit and Southwest are early morning or mid-evening which isn’t optimal for us and we’re not going to fly Allegiant. For our trips to Austin in 2021 and 2022, we flew on American Airlines. We even paid to visit the Admirals Club at Austin Airport before our flights.
Our plans were different for 2023 and we visited the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area of Tennessee instead of going to Texas for our early summer trip. We even stayed at the same cabin as when we visited in 2020.
But I’m very interested that Delta Air Lines is adding flights to/from Orlando and Austin to the schedule. The flight times aren’t perfect but it will be almost a year before we’d need to take one of these flights.
How does this new flight change my entire point strategy? For starters, it makes American AAdvantage and subsequently other oneworld airline miles less appealing. (BTW, here’s why the alliance name is all lowercase and “one” is in bold.) I’ve used American AAdvantage points and British Airways Avios to book flights to Texas until now, but I might be able to use Delta SkyMiles for the same trip.
In addition, if I’m flying to Austin on Delta instead of American, having access to the SkyClub would be more important than having access to the Admirals Club. It would make the extra fee to pay for an authorized user on the Platinum Card a better value than paying for an American Airlines Executive card with club access.
Finally, I’d have less need for American AAdvantage miles and more for Delta SkyMiles. For short-haul domestic flights, I’ve learned that I can earn about 1.33 cents per SkyMile.
I might even sign Sharon up for the Delta SkyMiles AMEX Reserve card which currently has an 85,000 mile bonus and provides the cardholder free access to Delta SkyClubs. The points she’ll earn and lounge access will easily be worth more than the $550 annual fee.
If we’re only going to visit an Admirals Club once or twice next year, is it worth paying extra for club access and points we’re not going to use?
That’s how an airline adding a single flight to the schedule can cause someone to reevaluate their airline loyalty strategy.
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