American Airlines Adds Service Between Miami and Milan

Tickets go on sale tomorrow for American Airlines’ new service between Miami and Milan.  This one strikes me as a bit odd.

It’s being serviced by a 767-300, and the flight times are reasonable.  The Miami departure is at 5:55pm and arrives in Milan at 9:35 in the morning the following day.  Milan to Miami is an 11:25am departure and a 4:40pm arrival.  Not a ton of time for the plane to be on the ground in Miami, but probably not an issue.

The press releases about this new route talk about state that travelers on this route will have access to over 125 destinations in Europe.  But, very few of those will be direct from Milan.  Currently, oneworld only serves Milan direct from 15 cities.  Given, it is served by most of the other OW carrier’s hubs, including Madrid, London, Helsinki, Berlin.  But, I don’t see many people choosing to take the extra connection for something like MIA-MXP-MAD-BCN (that’s Madrid and Barcelona on the back end for those that don’t memorize airport codes) when they could transit through an Iberia gateway like MAD from the US and get to Barcelona.  And, all the oneworld traffic isn’t through Malpensa (MXP).  Some of that partner traffic is going to Linate (LIN) which would warrant a change of airports to reach parts of the network.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about new routes, especially when it comes to expanded award availability.  But, unless you’re going to Milan or a OW hub (using Milan as your connection) this doesn’t strike me as terribly compelling.

It is mildly interesting that Milan continues to pick up more traffic, since it was just a couple months ago Emirates announced it was going to use Milan as an access point to the US, essentially dipping their toe back into trans-Atlantic waters.