American Airlines appears to be giving up on transcontinental flights from New York (JFK) to San Diego (SAN) which could be part of a bigger shift in its Northeast and West Coast strategies.
For the past few months, I've been observing American's JFK-SAN route, especially after Oneworld and West Coast partner Alaska Airlines announced it would launch the same route earlier this year. I've been hesitating on writing about this topic, but now there's signs of a bigger picture.
American Airlines has not flown the New York JFK to San Diego route since early 2020. As of now, American is set to resume the route with a twice-daily frequency on October 7 and operate it through October 30. After that, JFK-SAN completely disappears from American's schedule.
So, as of now, it seems as if American will be ending flights between New York JFK and San Diego after October 30. However, there could be a more significant idea specifically on this JFK-SAN route.
Brett Snyder/CrankyFlier today mentioned Alaska would drop the Los Angeles to New York JFK route and increase its new San Diego to New York JFK route. According to FlightView, Alaska will boost SAN-JFK from 5x weekly to 12x weekly on November 4 - just days after American appears to end the same route. In March 2022, Alaska further ramps up SAN-JFK to 14x weekly.
While American and Alaska are codeshare and alliance partners, they cannot coordinate on routes as they do not have antitrust immunity. Spirit Airlines accused the two airlines of coordination earlier this year over three short-haul Los Angeles routes.
As of now, it's unconfirmed if American Airlines is truly dropping the JFK-SAN route. American also recently began to codeshare with JetBlue's JFK-SAN flights. This codeshare, paired with Alaska's timely increase on the route, may indicate American giving up the New York to San Diego route to its two partners on opposing coasts.
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