Exciting new airline routes from November 2023 and beyond

01.12.2023 - 15:55 / thepointsguy.com

Airline network planners kicked off the holiday season dreaming about warm-weather destinations.

One spot in particular caught the eye of the "Big Three" U.S. airlines: Tulum.

A brand-new international airport will soon open at this popular destination in Mexico's Riviera Maya. This new airport should eliminate the need for sun-seekers to fly to Cancun and then take a two-hour car ride to Tulum, giving travelers unprecedented convenience to this popular oasis.

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At this point, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Ailrlines and Spirit Airlines have all announced new service to Tulum, but that's only scratching the surface of the route-map changes that airlines announced in November.

Read on for the full recap.

American's network planning department had perhaps the busiest November of all the major U.S. airlines. The carrier made sweeping changes to both its domestic and international networks — and the news was mostly negative.

Starting with the cuts, American axed all international flights from Seattle, where it planned to operate a strategic West Coast gateway hub in partnership with Alaska Airlines. The airline had originally planned to move some of its long-haul operations from Los Angeles to Seattle and launch new service to far-flung destinations such as Bangalore, India.

That short-lived experiment is now history, though, as American scrapped the last of its long-haul flights (service to London) from Seattle this month.

Domestically, American did an about-face in Austin, where it spent much of the pandemic boosting service to what some aviation observers thought could become a focus city for the airline. This month, the airline cut a whopping 21 routes to the city, effectively reversing almost all of the growth it unveiled during the pandemic. (Interestingly, American's move comes just days after Virgin Atlantic also announced that it would cease flying to Austin — another new route that launched during the pandemic.)

It wasn't all bad news for American, though. The airline joined the fray in announcing new service to Tulum from three hubs: Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth and Miami.

American also proposed a new service from New York to Tokyo and increased frequencies on routes to Latin America. The carrier closed out the month by announcing beefed-up schedules on 30 routes from Dallas-Forth Worth International iAirport (DFW), where the airline says it will fly its busiest schedule ever.

Alaska's hub in Portland received a big boost with the addition of a new service to Nashville. This will be the city's only nonstop flight to the Music City, and it represents Alaska's 53rd nonstop destination from Portland.