American Airlines sees 400% jump in bookings; discount flights to Cyprus at $650 one way

Bookings at American Airlines last week through aa.com and the American Airlines app were up 150 to 400 per cent compared with last year, and within a few points of 2019; bookings last weekend were even higher than they were over the same weekend in 2019, the company said in an internal communication seen by Reuters.

American Airlines flies to Cyprus from the Newark and JFK airports, with discount flights currently at $650 one way.

Maya Leibman, American Airlines’ Chief Information Officer, has sent a memo to some employees to share the “real upswing in business” that the airline is currently seeing. Among other things:  The last seven days have been American Airlines’s biggest revenue days since the start of the pandemic.

American had a nearly 80 per cent load factor on domestic flights last week.

The American Airlines figures confirm what the TSA (the Transportation Security Administration) reported earlier, namely that passenger numbers at US airports have recently risen to the highest level since the onset of the crisis.

Aviation is helped by the rapid pace of vaccination in the US and the decision of more and more American states to phase out or end lockdowns altogether. There is, however, a lot of domestic leisure traffic, and business traffic is lagging behind.

As of May American plans to fly all of its aircraft, and no planes will be grounded anymore

“These are stats we haven’t seen in a year. And all I’m hearing from my friends and family are their travel plans for this summer — you probably are too. It feels like there’s this incredible pent-up demand to GO SOMEWHERE!” the memo said.

“Sure, yields are not where we want them to be and we still have a long way to go but there’s no doubt that the train is leaving the station (plane is leaving the hangar — literally!). Spring has definitely sprung — you can hear it in the birds outside your window as well as the plane engines speeding down the runway.”