American Airlines will not be flying as much internationally in the summer of 2022 as it had first expected. The reason, the airline said, is the delayed delivery of Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Changes include the eliminating or delaying of several intended routes. However, American expresses its confidence in the type as an important part of its fleet.

Unable to deliver

The continued woes of Boeing's Dreamliner production are beginning to be felt by airlines. Reminiscent of the effects of the 737 MAX grounding, carriers are now having to adjust schedules as a result of airplanes that do not arrive. American Airlines said today it would scale back its intended long-haul summer schedule, set to load over the weekend.

"Boeing continues to be unable to deliver the 787s we have on order, including as many as 13 aircraft that were slated to be in our fleet by this winter. Without these widebodies, we simply won't be able to fly as much internationally as we had planned next summer, or as we did in summer 2019," an internal memo to staff seen by Simple Flying and signed by Vasu Raja, American’s Chief Revenue Officer, said.

Due to the lack of sufficient widebody aircraft, American would be forced to make changes to its plans for the coming months, the communication said. These include delaying or eliminating several routes the airline had planned for the summer months.

American is cutting several destinations from its network and significantly scaling down capacity on others. Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying

Routes cut or delayed

American said it would no longer serve Edinburgh, Shannon, or Hong Kong. However, it will continue to evaluate the destinations as more aircraft become available and hopes to serve them again in the future.

Several destinations from the 2019 network will not return. These include European destinations such as Dubrovnik and Prague. It will, however, operate a full schedule to London, Dublin, and Madrid.

Launches to new markets, such as the planned Seattle to Bangalore service, will be postponed. Furthermore, American is temporarily "but significantly" reducing capacity to Asia-Pacific destinations such as Shanghai, Beijing and Sydney. Meanwhile, the airline also announced it would be adding Doha from JFK, starting on June 4th.

American B787-9
American's least-used widebody this year is the B787-9. The most: the B777-200. Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying.

No more domestic Dreamliners

American Airlines will no longer deploy widebodies on its domestic network, which has been the case for summer and winter 2021. However, there is no bad blood between American and Boeing as a result of the delays.

"Our 787 aircraft are an important part of our fleet. Despite this delay, we still have great confidence in the Dreamliner and continue to work with Boeing on when these planes can be ultimately delivered to us."

In addition, Raja said, the planemaker has advised American that it would compensate the airline for the inability to deliver the aircraft.

What do you think of Americans schedule cuts? Does the added Doha service make sense given the other changes? Leave a comment below and let us know.