The two-aisle Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner has a range of more than 7,500 nautical miles, enough to fly passengers from Los Angeles to Sydney on a 15-hour non-stop. This summer, American Airlines plans to use the 285-seat plane on several much shorter routes, such as Chicago to Orlando.
With many overseas journeys still on the ground during the pandemic, American and Delta Air Lines are opting to deploy some of their large jets on domestic routes or for shorter international journeys.
It’s one of the ways airlines are rethinking their service during the pandemic. The planes are intended to fly long distances and fill with well-paid passengers traveling abroad. If demand for international travel returns, as American expects this fall, the airline would phase out the practice.
“It’s like buying a Porsche to drive to church on Sunday,” said Brian Znotins, US vice president of network planning.
Znotins said there is usually at least some domestic service using widebody jets on in-demand routes or to place planes in cities for long-haul flights, but the airline is expanding domestic service with them.
Domestic vacation travel has largely recovered from a year ago, airline executives say, but international bookings and service are still under pressure due to quarantine requirements, closed attractions and outright entry bans like those for most non-citizens from much of Europe. entering the US and vice versa.
The Fort Worth-based American plans to fly several Boeing 777s, the largest aircraft, from the Miami hub to both Los Angeles and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport this summer. It will use 787s in between on some flights between Philadelphia and Orlando, and to Las Vegas from Philadelphia, Chicago and Miami.
Delta uses Boeing 767s it would normally use for long-haul international flights on routes from Atlanta to Denver, Las Vegas, San Diego and its Minneapolis-St. Paul. These planes and the Airbus A330 will serve Hawaii from Seattle, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis-St. Paul, but also shorter flights such as the Twin Cities to Phoenix.
The idea is to “fill the largest boat you can find with seats at a very low cost and hope the fares come in,” said Robert Mann, an industry analyst and former airline president.
American is optimistic.
“During Easter and Spring Break, the widebodies we were operating did well on those days, but if you got a random Tuesday in mid-April, you’re not going to get really crowded anywhere in the system, let alone on a widebody,” said Znotins. “But as we move into Memorial Day and summer, just like a typical year, every day of the week starts to fill up and that’s where we’re starting to see the higher load factors.”
American’s schedule so far shows that it will operate a total of 3,104 flights with two-aisle aircraft on domestic routes in July and August, up from 563 a year ago and 2,846 in the same months of 2019, according to data from Ascend. by Cirium, an airline. consultancy.
The airline has been one of the most aggressive of the major carriers by capitalizing on the resurgence of domestic leisure travel, the bright spot in the journey as coronavirus cases have declined after their peak and vaccination rates are rising, and attractions such as Disneyland are reopening . American said Tuesday it expects to restore capacity to more than 90% of its 2019 domestic schedule this summer.
“American’s current strategy appears to be to fly as much as possible and worry about the returns later,” said Brett Snyder, a former airline manager who runs an air travel company, Cranky Concierge, and writes the Cranky. Flier. blog
Single-aisle aircraft, such as those in the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 families, still account for the vast majority of flying in the US, including American’s. The number of single-wing mainline airliners will increase to 189,862 in July and August, from 92,391 last year and 155,084 in summer 2019, according to data from Cirium. At American, Delta and United Airlines, these types of aircraft account for more than 70% of planned domestic capacity in July and August, comparable to pre-pandemic.
United normally flies more domestic voyages on wide-body aircraft than other US carriers, but this year that flying was made more difficult by the effective grounding of its Boeing 777 fleet with Pratt and Whitney 4000 engines pending inspections after a failure shortly after. a flight to Hawaii. departed Denver in February.