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American Airlines may be busy growing its long-haul network, but it’s also making some changes to its domestic operations.

The Fort Worth-based carrier filed plans over the weekend to cut domestic routes and add four others, as first seen in the Cirium schedule and later confirmed by a carrier spokeswoman.

American will take effect January 8, 2025, on a 667-mile route between Chicago and Columbia, South Carolina. The airline has only operated this route since July 2023, so it could not fill its 50-seat regional jet. This market.

Although Columbia will lose its main link to American’s Chicago hub, American will continue to fly to this outstation (where it is the largest carrier) from several other hubs, including Charlotte, Dallas, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington DC.

For domestics trying to get to Chicago, United Airlines will have a monopoly as the only carrier offering onward service to Chicago—which may not be good news for fares in this market.

“As part of an ongoing evaluation of our network, American has made the difficult decision to discontinue service between Columbia, SC (CAE) and Chicago (ORD). American will continue to offer service from CAE to five cities across the US.” The airline said in a statement.

While the cuts will certainly sting for locals, American is making some exciting additions at other airports around the country.

It begins with new year-round daily service from Los Angeles to Columbus, Ohio. The flight will take off on March 6, 2025 and American will enjoy a monopoly on the route.

Interestingly, Spirit Airlines used to fly this route, but the ultra-low-cost carrier plans to discontinue it early next year. American thinks there’s still enough demand in the market to fill the 172-seat Boeing 737-800, so we’ll see how the flight performs in the spring. (American last operated this route from 2013 to April 2020, at the start of the pandemic.)

An average of 150 daily passengers flew on Spirit from LA to Columbus last year, according to Cerium’s analysis of US Department of Transportation data; The average gross fare was $121.

About 130 daily passengers fly from LA to Columbus on other airlines. Assuming these demand trends, the odds are in American’s favor to fill its jets.

Flights will depart LA at 9:20 AM and land in Columbus at 4:55 PM, returning from Columbus at 5:45 PM and arriving at 7:30 PM.

“American is excited to welcome customers on our new nonstop service between Columbus and Los Angeles,” Jordan Peck, American’s director of local network planning, said in a statement. “Los Angeles joins a lineup of eleven other nonstop destinations from Columbus on American, giving customers convenient and robust access to our extensive global network of more than 350 destinations with just one stop.”

In addition to the new Columbus service, American will also add three limited-time domestic routes from Boston Logan International Airport (BOS). All these services will operate in February during the peak spring break period.

The airline will fly from Boston to Orlando and Fort Myers, Florida on February 14, 15, 16, 21, 22 and 23.

Meanwhile, the carrier is adding more flights in advance of the Super Bowl, which will be in New Orleans next year. The airline will fly from Boston to New Orleans on February 6 and 7 and will offer two flights to Boston on February 10.

The US While it’s fairly common for airlines to add one-off Super Bowl flights, major network carriers typically don’t add limited-time flights for peak demand periods. Perhaps American has excess domestic capacity over the winter that it wants to deploy strategically, or the carrier could be testing the waters to see about launching these routes for the long term.

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