American Airlines will add service from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires beginning in December on its Boeing 787-9 aircraft. As an Angeleno, I’m satisfecho by the news.
The closest airport offering nonstop service to Buenos Aires is Dallas (1,235 miles) with Houston (1,379 miles) and Mexico City (1,553 miles) not far behind. That’s leaves AA with quite an opening for its new route.
While yields on the route may not be as high as other destinations, I know many people personally who will pay a premium to fly nonstop from the West Coast. There must be many.
Buenos Aires is one of the indefatigable award destinations at Award Expert. Requests are consistent and unrelenting. Even during the economic upheaval of the Kirschner years, Argentina remained a very popular destination (and indeed, a very affordable one with black market currency exchange rates).
This move solidifies American Airlines as the strongest hub airline at LAX in terms of international route network. You can now (or soon will be able to) fly on AA nonstop from Los Angeles to:
- Auckland
- Beijing
- Buenos Aires
- Hong Kong
- London
- Sao Paulo
- Shanghai
- Sydney
- Tokyo Haneda
- Tokyo Narita
Throw in the amazing Flagship Lounge and Flagship First Dining and you have an airline that has opted to fight in the crowded LAX market. That puts pressure on others to match. Consumers win. Hopefully the new route will be profitable for AA.
CONCLUSION
Tickets for the new route will go on sale on April 02, 2018. If you’re considering a trip to Argentina over the holidays and want to use miles, watch for award space when this new route becomes bookable. While I do not anticipate much premium cabin award space, I suspect we will see some “sAAver” award space in economy class.
As you said some people will be willing to pay a premium. The question is how much. Since AA started their non-stop flight LAX-GRU it always charged way more than other airlines charge with one stop in between. For example, I just picked random dates in April for a round trip LAX-GRU-LAX. Copa Airlines, Avianca and Aeromexico business class with one stop are in the range of $2,800. AA non-stop is $6,800. In economy the difference is a one stop around $800 vs AA non stop for $1,500. I have Brazilian friends living in LA and they cannot justify flying a family of 4 to Brazil on vacation and paying the premium for non-stop on AA. I guess the same will happen on their flight to Buenos Aires.
A little OT, but what’s the rationale for the MIA-Cordoba route? Seems like an odd choice.
MIA is among top 5 destinations for argentines, and COR is the second largest city in AR.
EZE-LAX will also serve to connect Argentina with Asia instead of usual Emirates/Qatar/Ethiopian/europe carriers. USA still requires VISA but most argentine travellers have Italian/spanish passport.
Hope they have award space for this route. I will definitely be flying it when I can
AA has added a few days a week of service LAX-EZE, but the real story is that they have absolutely gutted their service to Brazil. LAX-GRU has gone down to 4 days a week, the morning MIA-GRU and MIA-CNF have been entirely removed from the schedule, and worst of all JFK-GIG will be reduced seasonally (from August-December) to only 5 flights/week (this after LATAM ceased service on the route). AA’s strategy to South America is really confounding, reducing supply and raising fares, offering less than daily service of little use to business travelers on most services.
Its almost as if the joint venture between LATAM and AA has had obvious antitrust effects that AA claimed wouldn’t happen??? Less service at higher prices.
Excellent notice! This new route is great for us (argentines) since we have very poor connections from Argentina to the U.S. West Coast. I’m sure many people in my country will began to explore that “side” of the U.S. and not only Miami and the East Coast. In fact, I’m one example. I’ve just booked tickets for my whole family (party of 4) to visit next january California and Hawaii. A 13 hours flight vs. a 18 or 20 hours flights (with 1 or even 2 stops) is a great difference specially when traveling with kids. It´s worth the difference (usd 250 per ticket).