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Surprising New Routes: American Airlines Adds Athens, Rome, And More For Summer 2025 Travel Boom
American Airlines has added 5 routes to its summer 2025 Europe schedule.
- Charlotte – Athens with a daily Boeing 777-200 starting June 5.
- Chicago – Madrid with a daily Boeing 787-8 starting March 30.
- Philadelphia – Milan with a daily Boeing 787-8 starting May 23.
- Philadelphia – Edinburgh with a daily Boeing 787-8 starting May 23.
- Miami – Rome with a daily Boeing 777-200. This doesn’t start until July 5.
American Airlines Boeing 787-8
Chicago seeing more international makes sense. American had killed its entire transoceanic operation there other than London Heathrow – and Madrid is joint venture partner Iberia’s hub.
American’s approach to international flying, broadly, is to fly to their close partner hubs and to operate seasonally to other destinations.
Summer to Italy is easy (well, not the old experiment they tried to Bologna but certainly Rome). And Philadelphia is their transatlantic connecting hub. Philadelphia – Edinburgh is a route that last operated in 2019 – it didn’t return post-pandemic – but it stretches back to US Airways days there.
I thought we would see Charlotte – Barcelona, honestly. Chicago – Athens is surprising but the Greek islands are doing very well. It’s not that people will stay in Athens but this is a way to get to Greece. This route got tipped early when the Charlotte airport followed Athens on Instagram.
Notably, New York JFK doesn’t seem any new love from American for summer 2025. With the loss of their JetBlue partnership, they continue to struggle with a strategy for their New York hub and competition in the New York market was ironically but predictably diminished by the DOJ’s anti-trust suit..
American is extending the season for Dallas – Barcelona; Miami – Paris; Philadelphia – Athens and Philadelphia – Naples. They’ve also announced plans to upgauge Dallas to Tokyo Haneda and Narita, Dallas – Shanghai and Los Angeles to Haneda.
American Airlines Business Class
In total the airline “will offer more than 70 daily departures to more than 20 trans-Atlantic destinations in summer 2025” including the return of Copenhagen, Naples, and Nice.