As those who grew up outside major cities know, a small luxury when going on a faraway vacation is to fly to your destination directly — cheaper fares, no rushed transfers in a crowded airport and no long hours spent in transit on the way home.
Tapping into this traveler interest in flying direct even if one does not live in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, American Airlines (AAL) just announced five new flights to Europe from cities such as Philadelphia, Miami and Charlotte, N.C.
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The first new flight will launch on March 30, 2025 and run a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner (BA) between Chicago's O'Hare International Airport (ORD) and Madrid's Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport (MAD) — a gateway for many tourists for Spanish and wider European vacations.
New American Airlines routes to take Americans to Edinburgh, Athens
The other new routes include flights from Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) to Edinburgh and Milan launching on May 23 and a route between Charlotte and Athens starting on June 5.
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The final flight to launch for the summer season on July 5 will run between Miami and Rome on a Boeing 777-200. The two new flights to Europe from Philadelphia bring the airline's network from the city to 80 destinations while Edinburgh, Scotland and Milan were chosen as cities that see high tourist interest during the summer months.
American has not flown to Edinburgh since 2019 (the Scottish capital is a six-hour train from London) but is bringing the route back for the summer of 2025.
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'More ways to visit favorite destinations in Europe'
"We look forward to providing customers more ways to visit their favorite destinations in Europe next summer," American Airlines Senior Vice President of Network and Schedule Planning Brian Znotins said in a statement. "Resuming service to Edinburgh and adding new routes to other popular destinations across the continent will offer customers convenient access from American’s industry-leading domestic network to all that Europe has to offer."
All of the flights will be available to book online for 2025 travel from Sept. 9, 2024. The new routes are an early start to the airline's upcoming summer schedule, as that is when demand for travel to European cities outside metropolises such as London and Paris spikes.
For the 2024 summer season, main American competitor United Airlines (UAL) brought in new flights to non-capital Portuguese destinations such as Faro and Ponta Delgada on top of routes to Spain's Malaga and Italy's Naples from Newark, N.J.
"American will offer more than 70 daily departures to more than 20 trans-Atlantic destinations in summer 2025," the airline writes further. "Launched in 2024, American will bring back flights to Copenhagen, Denmark (CPH); Naples, Italy (NAP); and Nice, France (NCE) for the 2025 summer travel season."
American is also bringing back the new flights from Newark to Copenhagen, Nice and Naples as well as San Francisco to Rome that it launched for the 2024 summer season for a second run in 2025. The flights will run several times a week — for certain routes, daily — until the weather starts to cool and then be retired until the return of the season.
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