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Last week American Airlines announced that it was putting through some changes to its European routes. The airline cancelled three existing seasonal services and replaced them with three new seasonal services to Amsterdam, Barcelona and Rome. What the airline didn’t announce last week was what the schedules for these new routes would look like….but now we know.
- All three new routes are for the Summer season only (May – September)
- All three new routes launch on 5 May 2017
Dallas/Ft Worth to Amsterdam
From 5 May 2017 American Airlines will offer a daily service to Amsterdam from its home at Dallas/Ft. Worth using a Boeing 767 aircraft.
The schedule looks like this:
AA220 DFW 15:30 – 08:25+1 day AMS
AA221 AMS 10:25 – 14:35 DFW
As someone who spends quite a bit of time in Europe I like the timings of those flights.
The flight from Dallas gets in to Amsterdam early enough for a full first day in Europe and the arrival time is early enough to allow travellers to connect to just about anywhere else in Europe they want to go.
The flight from Amsterdam flight doesn’t depart too early which means that it should be possible to fly into Amsterdam early in the morning in time to catch the flight to Dallas (flights out of the UK would be cutting it very fine). Once in Dallas the 14:35 arrival time still leaves plenty of time to get through immigration and connect on to American’s huge network out of DFW.
The fact that the flight will be operated by one of American’s 767 aircraft will be disappointing for a few people…especially as there are no personal TV screens in Economy. The Business Class seats are perfectly acceptable…..
American Airlines 767 Business Class
…but, as my review of the 767 will tell you, are nowhere near as good as the Business Class seats the airline offers on most of its other wide-body aircraft.
Chicago to Barcelona
This is a route that not a lot of people seemed to have picked up on last week but it’s there for everyone to see in the systems right now.
From 5 May 2017 American Airlines will offer a daily service between Chicago and Barcelona using a 787-8 Dreamliner.
The schedule looks like this:
AA040 ORD 17:15 – 09:15+1 day BCN
AA041 BCN 11:45 – 14:45 ORD
Once again the timings are pretty good with the outbound flight to Barcelona landing at a reasonable time for exploring the city or for connecting on elsewhere in Europe.
The flight back to Chicago departs late enough to make it simple to connect from a lot of other European countries and arrives into Chicago early enough to make connections to a lot of US cities work quite well.
As far as cabin comfort goes the Business Class product on the 787-8 Dreamliner is pretty good…..
American Airlines 787-8 Business Class Cabin
….although I still prefer the Business Class seats on the 777-300ER…but now I’m just being choosy!
Unfortunately, while passengers in Business Class should be pretty comfortable, I’m not sure the same will be said of those traveling in the Economy Class cabin.
With just 31″ of seat pitch and 17″ of seat width this isn’t the most comfortable of cabins by any stretch of the imagination. This is where having status pays off – being able to book exit rows and Main Cabin Extra seats at no extra cost really helps out on aircraft like this.
Dallas/Ft Worth to Rome
From 5 May 2017 American Airlines will start serving Rome from its hub at Dallas/Ft. Worth and, somewhat surprisingly, this will be the first time the two cities have been connected by air. The route will be operated daily by one of American’s 777-200 aircraft.
The schedule looks like this:
AA238 DFW 15:05 – 09:20+1FCO
AA239 FCO 11:20 – 17:00 DFW
Just like with the other two new routes the timings of the flights look pretty good…..but there’s already a potential issue with this route.
American Airlines has, for the time being, scheduled a non-updated 777-200 aircraft to operate the new Dallas – Rome route as can be seen from the seating configuration in the Business Class cabin:
And this means that the route may not offer:
- In-flight wifi
- All-aisle access Business Class seats
- True lie-flat Business Class seats
- A modern entertainment system
On a positive note: this does mean that Economy Class will have just 9 seats across the cabin…..
….which will see passengers have more seat width and seat pitch than they’d have in any other of American’s long-haul cabins.
Amusingly, for such a non-premium route, the aircraft may also feature a First Class cabin with 16 old-fashioned (but still pretty comfortable) first class seats:
American Airlines First Class 777-200
I’ve been very careful to use terms like “for the time being” and “may not offer” when describing the aircraft on this route because there’s a chance that it will get changed before the first flight has flown.
American told us last week that the wide-body refurbishment program would be finished in 2017 so it’s entirely possible that the aircraft we’re seeing on AA.com right now is just a placeholder for a refurbished aircraft that will appear on the route sometime in the next few months…..then again we could be stuck with the old plane for the duration of the summer 🙂
The Cancelled Seasonal Routes
To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction so, where American gives us 3 new seasonal routes, it also takes three away:
- Chicago – Düsseldorf
- Philadelphia – Brussels
- Philadelphia – Zurich
Bottom Line
Bookings are supposed to be live for these routes right now but a quick look at fares would seem to show that most (if not all) of the discounted Economy Class fares are yet to be loaded into the airline’s systems. If you’re looking to book these routes I’d wait a few days before jumping in.
I like these new routes. The three seasonal routes we now have would appear to be better/more interesting than the one’s being cut and, from my point of view at least, are a net positive.
Unlike some of my fellow bloggers I think we’ll see some decent fares on these routes (at least for departures from Europe). Amsterdam is a major Sky Team hub so it wouldn’t surprise me to see American get creative with some of their fares from there and we’ve seen good fare deals out of Rome before so I would keep an eye out on those too.
Here’s a prediction: We’ll see sub-$1,800 Business Class fares to the US using one or more of these routes before summer 2017 is out…hopefully to LAX! 🙂
