American Airlines to Australia & B777-300ER Sydney Flyover
 

Evening all,

Big news from American Airlines, Announcement at 3pm (PDT). Judging by their clues on their twitter page, Australia (not sure which city) is the next destination...

https://twitter.com/AmericanAir/stat...50045289238530

Maybe take over QF on the JFK-LAX-SYD run???

DFW-BNE, or maybe MEL...???

I would suggest it would be LAX-SYD. For market entry, it's a flagship, high profile route and AA gets a comprehensive QF domestic and NZ feed from SYD. May also allow QF to reallocate capacity to other routes also.

Then I'd suggest if it were LAX it'll be either LAX-SYD (enough frequency to allow QF to move MEL-LAX to double daily, or LAX-MEL on the days QF95/96 don't operate.

I'm still thinking DFW-BNE but we'll see in an hour and a half :)

Confirmed... AA to fly LAX-SYD daily with B777-300ER from 17 December 2015.

It gets bigger & better though, as QF to operate SYD-SFO from 20 December 2015 with B747-400 (A380 style cabins). SFO service to operate "on peak days" but moving up to 6x weekly from January 2016.

http://hub.aa.com/en/nr/pressrelease...ralia-6-9-2015

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-relea...300096385.html

Could this quote from the AA press release potentially mean that AA may enter (or QF re-enter) the LAX-AKL market in the future, re-establishing a OneWorld connection on that market and connecting with QF/JQ for services to Australia and within NZ? I see the QF/AA JV will change to a revenue share model, so this may make such a routing more viable now?

Sorry this may be a little off topic,

AA use 10 abreast seating (17" width) in Y on the their new 77W's, for a 12-14hr flight that would be torture IMHO... I'd prefer to stick with VA, UA & DL who use the more humane 9 abreast seating (18/18.5" width) in Y. It does seem that 10 abreast seating in Y is becoming more prevalent in many 777 operators globally. Having said that I have to admit AA's new J product on the 77W's is miles ahead of the MKII Skybeds used on the A380's & refurbished 744's.

It's still great to see AA back in YSSY with their new livery too!

Absolutely! I saw one of their 777s at Heathrow earlier this year. Nice looking livery.

The trade off according to The Qantas Source is that QF will reduce SYD-LAX from 14x weekly to 10x weekly to free up an aircraft to operate SYD-SFO.

QF's own press release says that, as well as MEL-LAX reducing to 9x weekly from 10x.