With an aim to expand its largest and fastest-growing hub, American Airlines has announced significant additions to its offerings at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport on Tuesday.
The move is part of the American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ: AAL) strategy to reach nearly 900 daily departures out of DFW Airport. The airline currently operates about 800, and the new routes scheduled to begin next year contain many smaller domestic destinations.
In the spring, American and DFW announced a $20 million deal to upgrade and add gates to the currently unoccupied Terminal E Satellite facility.
When renovations are done, 15 gates will be added to American’s DFW portfolio. For reference, the whole of Dallas Love Field Airport has 20 gates.
When American measures demand for a route, it studies two things. First, it looks at what the nonstop demand would be. Using the new DFW-Harlingen route for example it checks as to how many people in North Texas are interested in flying to Harlingen.
A region’s economic growth is a major factor in determining this portion. This is called the origin and destination market.
The other piece of the puzzle is determining how many people in the world want to travel to Harlingen, Raja said. Since DFW connects so many destinations around the world, a China-to-Harlingen or Honolulu-to-Harlingen travel plan is only one connection away.
DFW Airport is the airline’s largest hub. Through the first seven months of this year, there were more than 34 million American passengers at DFW Airport. The next largest American hub is Charlotte, which flew nearly 25 million people during the same time frame.
