American Airlines: Suspending Syd – LAX route from end August to October

First casualty of the reduced hotel quarantine international limits?

American Airlines is suspending its flights between Sydney and Los Angeles, its only remaining route between the USA and Australia from the end of August, until at least October.

The LAS/SYD flights AA72/AA73 have essentially been running as cargo flights from Los Angeles, but with a crew provision for passengers flying from Sydney to LAX.

ET is reporting that the latest updates to the Global Distribution System (GDS) travel agents use for airline bookings, like SABRE and AMADEUS are showing that AA72/73 flights are being suspended between August 31 until October 31 – the ‘official’ start of the northern hemisphere winter booking season.

Background

A week or so ago on 14 July, National cabinet agreed to reduce international arrivals from about 6,000 per week to 3,000.

While a legitimate response to the Delta outbreak in Sydney, which has now expanded across the state and on to Victoria, with incoming passenger loads as low as 10 to 15 – it was expected that some airlines might choose to alter their schedule regularity, suspend flights until capacity limits were restored to the previous levels, or pull out entirely.

2PAXfly Takeout

This is another timely reminder to wear your seatbelt when seated. Holding you close to your seat will protect you from the sort of injuries sustained on this flight, when unsecured passengers flew to the ceiling of the aircraft, and then came crashing down once the ‘drop’ ceased.

The hope will be that this is an anomaly – a ‘freak accident’ in casual parlance. If it is a systemic error either mechanical or electronic, then this is a larger concern for the airlines that fly Boeing Dreamliner 787 aircraft. Let’s hope it isn’t. If it is, it will pile on the woes to Boeing’s existing stack.

This is unfortunate news, especially if you were looking for a OneWorld member or Qantas partner airline to use if heading to the USA – not that you should be travelling anyway.

I’ll head back to my lock-down tasks now.