As travel continues to slowly recover amid the ongoing pandemic, we all keep hoping to see international travel opportunities gradually expand more—not further shrink. But unfortunately, American Airlines is experiencing a bit of a setback for its global network for 2022 due to a lack of, well, planes.
“Boeing continues to be unable to deliver the 787s we have on order, including as many as 13 aircraft that were slated to be in our fleet by this winter. Without these widebodies, we simply won’t be able to fly as much internationally as we had planned next summer, or as we did in summer 2019,” Vasu Raja, American’s chief revenue officer, stated in an internal memo sent to employees this week and seen by AFAR.
Due to the Boeing 787 delays, American has had to eliminate or postpone several international routes in 2022.
The destinations being eliminated in 2022 include:
Additionally, American will not be returning to several European markets that it had served in 2019, including:
American will be “temporarily, but significantly” reducing service to several cities in the Asia-Pacific region, including:
- Shanghai
- Beijing
- Sydney
The carrier will also be pushing back the launch of new service to Bangalore, India, from Seattle.
Raja stated that in 2022, American will shift more resources to enhance its domestic and short-haul international network to make it “even more comprehensive than what we offered in 2019.”
The carrier anticipates flying a full schedule to London, Dublin, and Madrid next year, and it will be adding flights from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Doha, Qatar in the summer—so it’s not all losses on the global flying front.
But the international route cuts come less than one month after American eliminated a whopping 27 routes from its domestic flight schedule, 18 of which were out of New York. United Airlines, too, has made service cuts recently, namely to smaller domestic airports throughout the country.
Following last month’s flight reductions, American said in a statement that the move was intended “to better connect customers with the destinations most important to them.”
Last month’s cuts at American included long-running shuttle service between New York’s LaGuardia Airport and Boston, and LaGuardia and Philadelphia, as well as some Costa Rica and Canada flights.
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