This is hot off the press today: American Airlines will join WOW Air and Icelandair as the third carrier to serve Iceland from DFW Airport. AA will serve Reykjavik starting June 1 and will use a Boeing 757 aircraft featuring lie flat business class seats and 176 total seats. The service will be a seasonal thrice weekly service much like WOW Air and Icelandair, which will offer year round 3x and 4x weekly services and will make it the only carrier to fly lie flat seats on the route. AA will now serve over 200 destinations out of DFW Airport with over 750 daily flights, and continues to expand its international route portfolio out of DFW. Other recent additions, include Amsterdam and Rome.
• Here is the time schedule for the route:
Departs DFW at 8:20 p.m. Arrives KEF at 9:15 a.m. (Next day)
Departs KEF at 11:10 a.m. Arrives DFW at 2:50 p.m.
AA Vice President of Network & Schedule Planning, Vasu Raja said the following in the press release:
“Reykjavik has become a very popular leisure destination and we look forward to giving our customers the opportunity to experience Iceland’s unique landscape of geysers, volcanos and hot springs with our new direct service next summer.”
A great way to spin what clearly is a rush to catch up and perhaps even undercut its rivals. American rightfully seems threatened by the Icelandic carriers’ potential to reel connecting traffic away from oneworld hubs in Heathrow and Madrid and its own portfolio of routes to Europe. Remember that the major objective of the Icelandic carriers is to serve Europe and make Iceland a free stopover on the way there. I wouldn’t think the DFW market by itself could support this kind of growth of service to Iceland. And this is not really something anyone expected I presume, but it definitely could be a positive for travelers across the U.S given the fierce competition on European routes now. Obviously American has a competitive advantage in the market given its massive hub operation at DFW and connecting traffic feed to service the route. But who knows what will happen the way Icelandair and WOW Air price their operations?
I actually caught wind of the news yesterday, but couldn’t divulge the information for the obvious reasons. It will be interesting to see where AA goes next with its DFW strategy.
P.S: Be on the lookout for award availability on the new route!
