James lives and breathes route development. Educated in Air Transport Management at Loughborough University and Cranfield University, James has a PhD in airline strategy. James was Market Opportunity Analyst at London Luton Airport and Chief Analyst at anna.aero. He taught airline strategy and economics to undergraduate and postgraduate students for five years and has worked closely with multiple carriers on route and market intelligence projects. He is based near London, UK.

American Airlines' busiest hub by far is Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). The Texas airport is number one in many ways, including the number of passengers, seats for sale, available seat miles, and flights. It also has the oneworld member's highest number of destinations from any hub.

All carriers have route churn, and American is no exception. Some links will always underperform relative to expectations and what else could be done with the aircraft. In some cases, a destination may be better served from another hub. In the past three years or so, American has ended nine routes from DFW.

American Has Cut These Routes From DFW Since 2023

The carrier's DFW schedule was explored using Cirium Diio data. This involved examining its network between January 2023 and July 2026. This was then compared to the routes available from August 2026 to March 2027. The process identified that nine airport pairs are no longer served, all of which are domestic. For inclusion, a minimum of ten departures must have existed. This rules out DFW to Rochester, New York, which had six departures in May 2023.

The eliminated markets are summarized below. Some may believe that looking back is unfair. After all, they may argue that, in this instance, three years or more have passed since some of the routes were removed. Nonetheless, comparing a network at different periods of time is usually interesting, as it shows how things have changed. It is simply a means of better understanding things. No route from DFW that was unserved between January 2023 and July 2026 is now flown by American.

American Eagle To Del Rio

For obvious reasons, American is very much the largest airline serving the vast Texas. In August 2026, the carrier has 41% of the Lone Star State's flights, easily surpassing United Airlines despite its Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) hub (24%) and Southwest Airlines in its home state (20%).

American's dominance rises to 47% for intrastate flights. Of course, using other metrics (such as the number of seats for sale) would yield different results, owing to the heavy use of regional jets. Still, American would also rank first for seats (42%), by just a much smaller margin.

The US Department of Transportation (DOT) shows that American Eagle flew from DFW to Del Rio International Airport (DRT) between November 2018 and April 2023. DRT is very close to the Mexican border and is 291 nautical miles (539 km) from DFW. A twice-daily operation existed, initially on Envoy Air Embraer ERJ140s and ERJ145s, and then on SkyWest CRJ700s (shown above). It seems the market was served on a normal commercial basis rather than funded by the Essential Air Service (EAS).

A total of 164,098 round-trip passengers were carried, with an overall load factor of just 59.3%. No wonder the route was cut. No year surpassed 69.1% (2019), with the worst year, in this sense, being the COVID-19-hit 2020 (43.5%). In the final 12 months, the DOT shows that 85% of the route's passengers flew elsewhere via DFW. The total revenue per available seat mile was lower than for all of American's routes from DFW to other airports in Texas.

American No Longer Serves These Places...

Recall that American has removed nine routes from DFW in the examined period. When related to American's entire network, only DRT and Columbus Airport (CSG), Georgia, near the Alabama border, no longer see the airline. The other seven airports do, whether from one hub or multiple facilities.

American Eagle originally flew from DFW to CSG between 2010 and 2013, when a twice-daily service on Envoy Air's ERJ135s (shown above) and ERJ140s was available. Flights resumed in April 2021 and continued through February 2023, with a daily operation on SkyWest's CRJ700s. The first time around, the average load factor was just 62.0%. The second time, it was barely different: 63.3%.

American's exit from DRT means that the airport no longer has any scheduled passenger service. United pulled out of IAH-CSG in 2013, having inherited the route from Continental. In contrast, CSG continues to see Delta Air Lines from Atlanta, 72 nautical miles (133 km) away, with three daily services.