American Airlines doesn’t have enough widebody aircraft to operate all of its planned long-haul routes in Summer 2022 and has been forced to axe several destinations, Vasu Raja, AA’s chief revenue officer told staffers in a new memo on Thursday.
Many of the problems stem from Boeing’s inability to deliver new 787 Dreamliners as air safety regulators carefully scrutinize the aircraft manufacturer’s production program.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been overseeing an inspection of Boeing’s Dreamliner jets for much of the year but a completion date remains unclear. Investigators are inspecting at least 10 yet to be delivered Dreamliners to make sure production flaws have been resolved.
“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,” Raja tells employees in the latest memo.
“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”.
The lack of long-haul capable aircraft available to operate next summer’s planned schedule stands in stark contrast to most of this year which started off with some widebody jets still in deep storage.
The whole fleet is now back in operation but some widebody aircraft are regularly plying domestic and short-haul routes that would normally be operated by single-aisle jets.
As a result, American will axe services to Edingburgh, Scotland; Shannon, Ireland and Hong Kong, although Raju says the airline will “evaluate” these routes as aircraft become available. Popular seasonal routes like Dubrovnik, Croatia and Prague in the Czech Republic will also be scrapped next year as AA prioritizes planes on other routes.
Surprisingly, that prioritization strategy means a new route between New York JFK and Doha, Qatar – a decision that has left some analysts scratching their heads.
Unsurprisingly, however, AA will “significantly” reduce services to destinations like Shanghai, Beijing and Sydney – given China’s Zero COVID strategy and Australia’s border controls, this should have been expected.
AA’s much-anticipated new route between Seattle and Bangalore is, though, another casualty and this service will be delayed until the airline gets enough new widebodies delivered.
“Our 787 aircraft are an important part of our fleet,” Raju reassured staff. “Despite this delay, we still have great confidence in the Dreamliner and continue to work with Boeing on when these planes can be ultimately delivered to us.”
Raju confirmed that AA would be compensated for the delay but details of the payout remain confidentual.
