{"id":239943,"date":"2025-05-13T14:03:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T14:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/airline\/americans-laguardia-strategy-takes-another-turn-cranky-flier\/"},"modified":"2025-05-13T14:03:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T14:03:11","slug":"americans-laguardia-strategy-takes-another-turn-cranky-flier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=239943","title":{"rendered":"American\u2019s LaGuardia Strategy Takes Another Turn \u2013 Cranky Flier"},"content":{"rendered":"


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We\u2019ve been talking about American\u2019s strategy in New York for a very, very long time. The airline is undersized, and there is no clear solution. It briefly hoped it solved its problem in New York with the innovative Northeast Alliance (NEA) with JetBlue, but the court\u2019s ruling shutting down that plan forced American to figure out yet another new path forward. Now, with no hope of a partnership<\/a> to improve its fortunes in the near future, it appears the airline is shifting again.<\/p>\n

Recently, American announced it would not be able to come to an agreement with JetBlue<\/a> for a new partnership that would pass federal antitrust scrutiny. This means that in the foreseeable future, American has decided that it will just accept its position as a distant fourth place airline in the region behind Delta, United, and JetBlue. Maybe that changes with a merger or acquisition in the mid- to long-term future, but barring that, it is always going to be a laggard in the market.<\/p>\n

So what do you do if you\u2019re American? There have been a variety of strategies used over the years. The plan before the NEA seemed to be focused on serving smaller cities where American could provide more value to people in those places who were flying to New York. It was not about New York origin, for the most part. But that hasn\u2019t worked very well.<\/p>\n

In recent months, it looked like American was focusing its New York growth in leisure markets that would appeal to the local traveler. This year saw the start (or restart) of Fort Myers, Myrtle Beach, New Orleans, Orlando, Tampa, and West Palm Beach, all big sun markets. We also saw additional northeast leisure flying primarily in summer, including Burlington, Hyannis, Martha\u2019s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Portland (ME).<\/p>\n

The idea here was to effectively focus on the leisure traveler instead of the business traveler, with some notable exceptions like LA, San Francisco, and of course, London. It could use small airplanes to serve those high-dollar markets in the northeast while it used bigger airplanes to go on the sun runs where fares were lower but demand was plentiful.<\/p>\n

Either I didn\u2019t quite understand the plan at the time, or it has now shifted once again. Now, American seems most interested in big markets that actually do appeal to the business traveler but also leisure. Anyone else getting whiplash?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look at top domestic markets for all airlines based on 2024 passenger numbers with whether American served the market or not in 2023, 2025, and in the new future plan. One note here: I assumed that all summer markets served in 2025 will still be in the future plan.<\/p>\n

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Purple is newly-entered, red is exited, data via Cirium<\/a><\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n

To be fair, New Orleans, Orlando, Tampa, and West Palm Beach are all top 20 markets, so those could have been part of this new strategy to go big. But American will now also go back into Atlanta \u2014 a market it ditched during the NEA \u2014 and Fort Lauderdale. That means in the top 10 markets that can be served nonstop from LaGuardia, it will only not serve the United hubs in Denver and Houston.<\/p>\n

American isn\u2019t only focused on huge markets, also filling in a little below that level with Charleston (SC) on the list. But it is also going deeper into smaller markets that might have business demand. For example, Madison will now have service, and Burlington will go year-round.<\/p>\n

With all of these adds, it means something has to go away thanks to the slot controls in place. And American will be walking away from several smaller markets:<\/p>\n