As part of their route-planning for the year ahead, airlines will typically launch a "burst" of new routes to a given state or area.
With Florida gaining nearly half a million new residents in the last year, both budget airlines such as Breeze and Porter and mainstream carriers like United Airlines (UAL) -) have been dropping numerous new routes to different cities in the Sunshine State seemingly every week. JetBlue (JBLU) -) and Frontier (FRON) -), meanwhile, have been trying to outdo each other with more flights to Puerto Rico.
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As the fourth fastest-growing state in the country that has been attracting an average 412,958 new residents every year, Texas is also on many airlines' radar as the place that can bring in serious dollars from travelers who need to get there — on Nov. 30, American Airlines (AAL) -) announced plans to launch or expand 30 new routes to both domestic and international destinations from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW).
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Some new flights, others to run more frequently
Some of the new routes include new flights to Dallas from New York's Albany and Oregon's Redmond in the U.S. and Barcelona and Mexico's Tulum internationally for the summer of 2024. American Airlines will also be increasing its service to a respective five and three flights a day to Mexico's Los Cabos and Querataro as well as two flights a day to Guatemala City and Costa Rica's San Jose.
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For flights within the U.S., the airline is also increasing its service between Dallas and San Francisco to 10 daily flights while running the 1-hour-and-40-minute flight to Baton Rouge six times per day. Other expanded routes include nine daily flights between Dallas and Seattle and five daily flights to Florida's Destin.
Smaller cities with significantly expanded American Airlines service include the four daily flights that will take place between Dallas and Tennessee's Chattanooga as well as the same number of flights to College Station, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and Knoxville, Tenn.
American Airlines will also be increasing the planes it uses for flights between Dallas and California's Santa Rosa from the smaller Embraer to the larger Airbus A319 (EADSF) -). The flight from Dallas to Traverse City, Mich., will now also run on an Airbus A321 instead of an Airbus 320.
American plans to make 'continued investments in its largest hub'
All of this is part of a wider effort to turn Dallas Fort Worth International Airport into a hub to match Delta's (DAL) -) dominance at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and United's hub at Chicago's O'Hare. As part of a $5 billion capital investment into the city's airport, a sixth terminal is currently being constructed while another one is in the midst of major renovations.
This expansion will bring the total flights leaving from DFW to 850 per day by the summer of 2024 while American Airlines has previously commented on its goal to eventually reach 1,000 daily flights.
"We're thrilled to offer more seats than ever before to our local and connecting customers at DFW next summer," American Airlines' SVP of DFW Hub Operations Jim Moses said in a statement. "Following our team's strong operational performance this year and the airline's continued investments in its largest hub, we are prepared and excited to operate this robust schedule."
