American Airlines axes Hong Kong-Dallas service as another carrier pulls routes amid city’s tough Covid-19 aircrew rules
- World’s largest airline slashes several international services, blaming Boeing for not delivering new aircraft
- American Airlines has suspended some of its flights to Hong Kong since February 2020 over city’s stringent Covid-19 rules for aircrew
The world’s largest airline revealed on Thursday that it planned to discontinue, delay or scale back several international flights ahead of the summer, blaming Boeing for being unable to deliver new aircraft and causing a shortfall in the availability of widebody jets.
On top of AA withdrawing its Hong Kong route from March next year, which also ranks as the longest passenger flight on its schedule, services to Beijing, Shanghai and Sydney will also be “significantly” reduced, while the introduction of a new service from Seattle to Bangalore has been delayed.
Vasu Raja, the airline’s chief revenue officer, told staff in a memo that the carrier would stop flying to Hong Kong, Scotland’s Edinburgh and Shannon in Ireland.
“We’ll continue to evaluate these routes as more aircraft become available and would like to be able to serve them again in the future,” he wrote.
The direct links to Dallas Fort Worth, the home base of the carrier, consistently offered cheap economy fares and access to harder-to-reach cities across the Americas.
Hong Kong joined the American network back in 2014, connecting to and from Dallas in a flight taking about 15 to 16 hours. Two years later, the airline added a Los Angeles link.
