American Airlines suspends Sydney flights

American Airlines will suspend flights between Sydney and Los Angeles from May 5, citing "ongoing delays" to the delivery of new Boeing 787 jets.

The daily trans-Pacific service is American's only Australian route; also being put on ice are Seattle to London and Dallas Fort Worth to Santiago, while the launch of a new flight between Dallas Fort Worth and Tel Aviv has also been pushed back.

An American Airlines spokesman confirmed the changes to Executive Traveller, adding that the carrier was "proactively reaching out to customers scheduled to travel on affected flights to offer alternate arrangements."

"American is committed to Australia and offers service through our Oneworld partner, Qantas," he added.Qantas' daily Sydney-Los Angeles schedule in May shows an Airbus A380 five days a week, with the mid-sized Boeing 787 Dreamliner currently slotting in on Tuesday and Sunday.

The Boeing 787 has become American's international workhorse, but in December 2021 the airline suggested it would need to revise its schedule to account for as many as 13 planes it had counted on having but remained undelivered.

"Without these wide-bodies, we simply won't be able to fly as much internationally as we had planned next summer," Vasu Raja, American's chief revenue officer, said in an internal memo.

This weekend, in a posting to American's internal staff website, the airline stated "we had expected Boeing to deliver all 13 of our delayed 787-8 aircraft in 2022, but we now expect to receive only 10 787-8s this year, with the remaining aircraft now scheduled for delivery in 2023."

Boeing is working to find and repair tiny structural imperfections in the carbon-fibre aircraft while addressing quality lapses among suppliers and their subcontractors.

"Despite the ongoing delay, we still have tremendous confidence in the aircraft and will continue to work with Boeing on their delivery," the airline stated, adding that the airline would receive compassion from Boeing "for their inability to deliver the aircraft."

American Airlines reinstated daily Sydney-LAX flights in early January this year, after halting the service in August 2021 "due to the ongoing travel restrictions" sparked by Covid-19, an American Airlines spokesman told Executive Traveller at the time.

American's US rivals Delta Air Lines and newly-minted Virgin Australia partner United Airlines will continue their daily Sydney-Los Angeles flights.

Source : Executive Travellers