In Orange County, California, American Airlines is expanding.
New transcontinental service from the airline's hub at Charlotte Douglas International Airport to Orange County's John Wayne Airport (SNA) has just been filed (CLT).
According to the Cirium schedules, the new daily service will start on July 5 and continue until August 14.
On the route, American will use a 196-seat Airbus A321neo with 20 first-class recliners, 47 Main Cabin Extra seats, and 129 economy seats.
American may decide to extend the schedule if the service is successful, even if the 2,099-mile flight is only loaded for six weeks during the busiest summer months.
This is merely the most recent improvement for Americans in Orange County.
The 102-seat Airbus A321T, the swankiest aircraft in the fleet, operates the new transcontinental route to New York that the airline added during the epidemic. It has 10 Flagship First pods, 20 Flagship Business lie-flats, and 72 economy seats, half of which are in an extra-legroom arrangement.
In June 2022, as part of a significant expansion in the Texas capital, the airline also began operating a service from Austin to Orange County.
The airline probably wants to take advantage of the airport's catchment region, which is among the most affluent in the country, which explains all of this expansion in Orange County.
American said in a statement announcing the change:
“With an average of approximately 600 peak daily departures from our CLT hub, American's commitment to providing customers with the broadest network of any U.S. airline through the summer is demonstrated once again by the launch of this route. With CLT included, our network now extends to six locations, including Austin, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, New York, and Phoenix, from SNA.”
In Orange County, obtaining takeoff and landing privileges is notoriously difficult.
Locals and tourists who prefer to bypass the considerably larger and busier Los Angeles International Airport sometimes choose SNA (LAX).
Slots are used by the Orange County government to control the quantity of aviation traffic in the region. Even though SNA doesn't have a nationally run slot program in the classic sense (to manage capacity), local officials nonetheless limit commercial passenger traffic for things like noise reduction.
Airport authorities announce an allotment of daily flights, or ADDs, that each airline may operate each year. For 2023, American won 19 ADDs.
A carrier representative declined to provide any information, so it was unclear right away whether American was reducing frequencies on another route to make place for the new Charlotte flight.
Southwest had to discontinue certain Orange County routes earlier this year due to this odd slot allocation procedure.
It's interesting to note that United Airlines is increasing transcontinental connectivity from Southern California alongside American. The Chicago-based airline announced intentions to replace its Hawaii route from SNA with an additional trip to Newark Liberty International Airport late last year (EWR).
The new American route will fly under flight number 2099, which appears to be a reference to the distance between Charlotte and Orange County in miles.
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