For the last year, the capital of Texas has become a shining example of what happens when developers and airlines get too excited about a temporary spike in popularity.
Austin, which saw the population of the wider city soar from 1.6 million in 2013 to 2.3 million in 2023, was many people’s relocation option during the pandemic, while the buzz around it also helped drive significant tourist interest. American Airlines (AAL) , Delta (DAL) , Virgin Atlantic, Aeromexico (GRPAF) and Lufthansa (DLAKF) all quickly started launching new flights to Austin from both main and regional cities.
Related: American Airlines becomes latest to pull back from this once-popular city
But interest quickly started to shift and, over the last year, multiple airlines have started to cancel flights to Austin that they launched to great fanfare.
Here are the latest Austin cuts from American Airlines
Virgin and Spirit (SAVE) both canceled a number of flights to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) at the end of 2024 while American Airlines cut 21 routes to the city from different parts of the U.S. a few months later — some of the affected cities include New Orleans, Las Vegas, Reno and Orlando.
‘American will reduce service from Austin starting this winter’
Three months after the last round of cuts was made last July, American Airlines just confirmed that it is cutting four more routes to Austin: from Boston, Raleigh-Durham, Nashville and California’s Orange County.
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“As part of the continuous evaluation of our network, American will reduce service from Austin starting this winter,” the airline first confirmed in a statement to The Points Guy. “American will continue to offer customers access to our comprehensive global network of more than 350 destinations with one-stop connections.”
The latter flight will stop running on Jan. 5, 2025 while the other three will be cut in the first week of November. All of these flights were launched during American’s period of “Austin expansion” but likely were not able to generate the traffic to keep them profitable after the buzz around the city had passed.
The airline currently runs flights to the city from Charlotte, Cancun, New York and Dallas/Fort Worth.
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American stresses Austin is an ‘important market’ but numbers don’t add up
“Austin remains an important market for American as we continuously evaluate our network,” the airline said in a statement after another round of cuts in November 2023.
In total, American Airlines cut 21 Austin flights in 2023, five in July 2024 and the additional four now. Along with the news around the canceled Austin flights, American also announced that it is launching a new route to Tampico in Mexico’s Tamaulipas state.
The flight will run from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) once a day on an Embraer E170 (ERJ) . Along with other places outside of Mexico’s capital and popular resort areas like Cancun and Riviera Maya, Tampico has been seeing increased interest from U.S.-based tourists.
This brings American to running a total of 29 Mexican destinations and 230 international ones from DFW. In a statement, American Senior Vice President Of DFW Operations Jim Moses said that the airline is “proud to operate as the largest U.S. airline in Mexico.”
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