American Airlines is boosting regional connectivity in two major Northeast hub airports.
The Fort Worth-based carrier filed plans over the weekend to add service from LaGuardia Airport (LGA) to Des Moines International Airport (DSM) in Iowa and from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) to Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport (BTR) in Louisiana, as first seen in Cirium schedules and later confirmed by the carrier.
Both flights will commence on June 1, and they will operate on a daily basis year-round using a 76-seat Embraer E175.
American Eagle regional affiliate Republic Airways will fly the LGA route, while wholly owned subsidiary Envoy Air will operate the DCA flight.
Perhaps most interestingly, the new Baton Rouge flight has been in the works for years. Local officials worked with the Federal Aviation Administration to secure $1 million in funding from the Small Community Air Service Development Program to help launch the route.
This grant, first announced back in 2021, can be used to offer incentives for airlines to launch new routes; incentives typically include revenue guarantees, waived landing fees, a marketing budget and more.
“Over the past two years, we have secured record investment in the Baton Rouge airport to help provide better air service out of the region. Based on passenger data, Washington, D.C. and Chicago are the two most frequent destinations out of our airport. This investment will help to establish a direct flight between Baton Rouge and Washington DC. Lord knows Washington needs our help at a moment’s notice,” U.S. Rep. Garret Graves said when announcing the grant.
While American might enjoy some incentives for the new DCA to Baton Rouge flight, it does need to use a valuable slot pair in DCA to make the new route work.
To manage capacity, the FAA categorizes DCA as a Level 3 airport, meaning that takeoff and landing permissions are administered via slots. There’s a fixed limit of 48 operations per hour at DCA by FAA regulation between 6 a.m. and 11:59 p.m.
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Each new flight requires a slot pair, and American didn’t cut any routes to or from DCA as part of this week’s scheduled load. It remains to be seen if American will need to make changes elsewhere in its DCA schedule to accommodate the new Baton Rouge flight.
The new LaGuardia service comes on the heels of a big boost in domestic connectivity that the airline announced late last year as part of its Northeast Alliance tie-up with JetBlue Airways.
American is gearing up to add the following six destinations to its LaGuardia network on May 5:
- Birmingham, Alabama — once daily.
- Buffalo, New York — three times daily.
- Columbia, South Carolina — once daily.
- Grand Rapids, Michigan — once daily.
- Greenville, South Carolina — twice daily.
- Knoxville, Tennessee — once daily.
JetBlue also announced four new routes from LaGuardia at the same time as American, and it recently put those new flights on sale.
In a statement confirming the new LGA route, a spokesperson shared:
American Airlines is thrilled to connect Des Moines International Airport to New York’s LaGuardia Airport this summer. This new daily flight brings our service from DSM to six destinations this summer. We’re excited to offer customers more ways to experience all that New York City has to offer and provide local residents with additional access to American’s global network.
Just like DCA, LaGuardia is a slot-controlled airport. American didn’t make any major cuts to its LaGuardia network in this latest schedule update, so it wasn’t immediately clear which slots American will use for the Des Moines flight.
For more about American’s network, check out:
