The airline announced it would cancel a startling number of routes from one of its larger hubs.
American Airlines is making a major overhaul to its schedules, slashing 21 routes from its Austin (AUS) operation, per The Points Guy. The announcement does away with many of the new routes the airline established during the pandemic, indicating that Austin may not have been the busy travel center American had anticipated.
“Austin remains an important market for American as we continuously evaluate our network,” American said in a statement to Men’s Journal. “Together with our partners, American will continue to offer customers service to 15 of the top 20 markets from AUS, while continuing to offer one-stop connections across our comprehensive global network to more than 350 destinations around the world.”
Some of the canceled routes include Albuquerque, Cincinnati, Memphis, and Sacramento. Based on the scrapped flights, Florida wasn’t popular with Austin fliers. Routes to Fort Myers, Jacksonville, and Tampa were all excised from the schedule.
Austin will still provide service to most of the airline’s hubs, except Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and LaGuardia Airport in New York. American will also still serve some point-to-point destinations like Aspen, Las Vegas, and New York.
The airline promises the nixed routes will free up 53 percent more seats each day on their remaining routes to and from Austin, and will allow for 19 additional daily departure times for those destinations. American Airlines says it will reach out individually to customers who may be affected by the cancellations with updated travel itineraries.
Those with holiday plans out of Austin can rest assured, though, the routes will run through the rest of 2023. The first cancellation won’t take effect until January 6, 2024; by April 3, the new schedule will be in full effect. You can view the entire list of canceled routes here.
The news comes on the heels of a rash of changes made by American. Earlier this summer, the airline slapped passengers with a new luggage fee and terminated its popular partnership with JetBlue.
