American Airlines announced it is drastically scaling back its international presence in Los Angeles, slashing the majority of its longhaul flights. Will Delta and United step in to fill the void or is LAX simply too difficult a hub?
AA Announces Major International Reduction At LAX
American Airlines will end longhaul service from Los Angeles to:
- Beijing
- Buenos Aires
- Hong Kong
- Sao Paulo
- Shanghai
That will leave:
- Auckland
- London
- Sydney
- Tokyo
American called its cancelled longhaul routes “underperforming” and will concentrate its transpacific traffic at Dallas-Fort Worth, though it will add Seattle – Shanghai service from its new Seattle focus city.
AA’s story is a familiar one. LAX does not have a dominant carrier and airlines have struggled to find profit in Los Angeles over the years.
Why Carriers Struggle At LAX
Delta tried London Heathrow service and failed. United tried Frankfurt, Hong Kong, and Singapore service and failed. Los Angeles, more than any other airport in the USA, has a high concentration of origin-destination (local, not-connecting) traffic. So what is the problem?
On the negative side, high competition from U.S. and foreign carriers drives fares downs and limits profitability. It is no longer a surprise to see transpacific economy fares under $600 or transatlantic fares under $400. While those may not be sustainable longterm, we’ve seen them long enough that they are more than just a blip. The pandemic may change that, especially if air travel to China remains restricted and Norwegian permanently scales back longhaul service.
On the positive side, one reason why U.S. legacy carriers have avoided such a huge build up at LAX is because their partners already have it covered. Even as alliances continue to lose their relevance, these partnerships remain and even stronger joint venture partnerships mean revenue sharing, making which carrier actually operates the flights less important.
U.S Legacy Partner Carriers Serving LAX
American Airlines has partners offering nonstop longhaul service at LAX including:
- Air Tahiti Nui
- British Airways
- Cathay Pacfiic
- China Southern
- Etihad
- Fiji Airways
- Finnair
- Iberia
- Japan Airlines
- Qantas
- Qatar Airways
Delta Air Lines has longhaul partners serving LAX including:
- Aeroflot
- Air France
- Alitalia
- China Eastern
- KLM
- Korean Air
- Saudia
- Virgin Atlantic
- Virgin Australia
- XiamenAir
United Airlines has longhaul partners serving LAX including:
- Aer Lingus
- Air China
- Air New Zealand
- ANA
- Asiana
- Austrian
- Avianca
- EVA Air
- LOT Polish
- Lufthansa
- SAS
- Singapore Airlines
- SWISS
- Turkish Airlines
That’s quite a conglomerate of partners for all three carriers.
Is This A Golden Opportunity For Delta Or United?
I asked Patrick Quayle, United’s Vice President for International Network and Alliances, about how United would respond to AA’s latest departure at LAX. He told me:
“As airlines continue to move through the current environment and make changes and adjustments to their network offerings, there may be opportunities for United. We remain committed to serving the Los Angeles market and we will continue to closely monitor demand and adjust our schedules as demand dictates.”
That’s hopeful in one sense. United at least leaves open the opportunity for more service. On the other hand, Quayle did not even affirm United’s hub status at LAX, setting only that it would contain to serve the LA market. United CEO Scott Kirby has said “there are no sacred cows” when it comes to preserving all existing United hubs.
Delta did not respond to Live and Let’s Fly prior to publication, but likely would have given the same non-answer answer.
From my own viewpoint, as much as it seems like a golden opportunity to bulk up international service, it has been tried before and usually fails. With partners increasingly able to offer passengers nonstop service to major cities around the world, adding additional flights makes less sense than other hubs like Minneapolis or Denver where passengers are hub captive.
CONCLUSION
As an Angeleno, I’d love to see more longhaul nonstop service from legacy airlines. But I don’t expect it. LAX is too competitive and most gap are already filled by partners.
Do you think United or Delta will counter American’s retreat with more flights at LAX?
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image: Prayitno / Flickr
Scared cows? Sorry, had to laugh at this misquote.
sa·cred cow
/ˈsākrid ˌkou/
noun
plural noun: sacred cows
an idea, custom, or institution held, especially unreasonably, to be above criticism (with reference to the Hindus’ respect for the cow as a sacred animal).
“the sacred cow of monetarism”
Definitions from Oxford Languages
It initially said scared cows. A typo but a funny one.
+1. If intentional, this was awesome.
The answer is fairly obvious – it would be Delta.
United uses SFO as its main TPAC gateway, and isn’t going to be expanding anytime soon at LAX.
Much like DL has built up in NYC (mainly at the expense of AA), they will continue to do so now at LAX.
how’s the pandemic treating ya ? splendid i’m sure.
I assumed United laid off all minimally paid so-called “influencers” who heap praise on the airline for $.02/word…maybe you are working for half price?
It appears that DL still has someone on THEIR payroll.
LOL not at all…I’m a UA 1KMM…take off rose colored classes and you will see DL is just a better airline than UA.
The ONLY thing UA had going for it vs. DL was MileagePlus…and they’ve now decimated that too.
Delta might take a shot at LAX Shanghai to connect with China Eastern for O&D but the rest don’t have much appeal. The fact is LAX is poorly located for a hub. It is too far south (and east) for connecting flights. For northern hemisphere flights, the farther north you locate your hub, the less out of the way it is to connect and the cheaper the flights are to operate.
UA has in the past served a number of the routes AA is abandoning.
It could happen.
Looks like AA192 HKG-LAX will be running in Oct.
“United CEO Scott Kirby has said “there are no scared cows” when it comes to preserving all existing United hubs.”
yea right. he would send his first-born to live in wuhan before he’ll dehub SFO. If there’s one single hub they must defend till the very end, it’ll be SFO.
Push comes to shove, EWR would be sacrificed to save SFO.
Which is thoroughly ironic that the airline of Chicago doesn’t have ORD in the Top 2 in terms of sacred crows.
Do you get to pick where the ads show up in the middle of the article? Just curious if you get to pick where the breaks appear or not?
On my phone browser, the ad appeared right after a semicolon, before the list of airline partners. Was an odd place to break the text, so I assume you don’t have control over it.
Odd. I do not get to pick and have no control. Sorry about that!
No reason to apologize and hope my comment wasn’t rude. Didn’t mean it to be.
@mike murphy- I believe AA said the changes to the international schedule will be reflected on July 5, so LAX-HKG should be gone from SABRE and online booking tools.
LAX is simply too expensive. AA needs to invest more at ONT.
ONT has plenty of capacity but little demand. The lack of partner international traffic may be part of that. Too bad there isn’t high speed service from DTLA to ONT via the yellow line.
If it weren’t for COVID, I think Delta would pounce to lose some Seattle service and beef up LAX. Maybe years after the pandemic they will
If Delta were brave, maybe they could try to relaunch HKG service from LAX or launch SIN service. It remains a big gap in their offering. Sure, you fly Korean, but a Delta metal option would be great
Also with the question surrounding Virgin Australia aka them flying long haul. Delta most likely will be in a position of having to improve there LAX presence just to keep the number constant. So it isn’t too far of a stretch for to expand to some more TPAC routes.
Delta. United busy with other fishes.
My prediction is that the AA-AS partnership will force DL to retreat at SEA, and they need a West Coast hub, so they will build up LAX. UA already has a dominant West Coast hub at SFO, and has previously built up LAX with significant international operation only to downsize it, so they’re likely not going to repeat this again.
I don’t think they’d abandon Seattle. They’ve invested too much and have been aggressive in responding to AA-AS. Doing the same in Boston, in response to the NEA. Adding a lot of destinations and using new aircraft on key routes.
LAX has always presented so many challenges in creating a hub.