New nonstop destinations from Northwest Arkansas National Airport make headlines, but airlines often make less-talked-about improvements to current routes that can be important to travelers.
American Airlines has a trio of improvements coming at XNA next month, making travel better to Dallas/Fort Worth, Charlotte and Phoenix.
The biggest of those improvement is to Phoenix as the airline’s once-a-day departure increases to two times daily.
American will keep its original XNA departure, which leaves around 8:30 a.m., and is adding a 2 p.m. departure to the schedule. The new flight starts Sept. 4.
American started flying its Phoenix nonstop in February 2023, and XNA administrators spent years trying to convince American that the flight would be an economic success. American wasn’t swayed.
That changed in the fall 2022 when Breeze Airways indicated it would fly nonstop from XNA to Phoenix Sky Harbor. Within a few days of the Breeze announcement, American followed suit and announced a daily departure from XNA to the same airport.
About 50 people a day made the trip to Phoenix prior to the American flight’s start last year. Those fliers relied on connecting flights or the twice-a-week nonstop flown by Allegiant Air on a seasonal basis. In the first quarter of this year, the route averaged 92 passengers a day, making it XNA’s eighth busiest destination.
Charlotte
American will add a fifth daily departure from XNA to Charlotte, starting Sept. 6.
The route has grown from 58 passengers a day to 66, but that’s not enough of an increase to justify the new flight. It’s probable that American’s route planners are seeing more XNA travelers use Charlotte as a connection to get to other cities, making the additional flight necessary.
Dallas/Fort Worth
There is increasing travel to Dallas/Fort Worth from XNA, and American captures almost all of those 115 passengers a day. The route produced about 99 passengers daily between April 2022 and March 2023.
Dallas/Fort Worth, however, is far more important to XNA travelers, as hundreds of Arkansans fly there before making a connection to their final destinations.
It’s that connecting traffic that makes it possible for American to increase the size of its planes going from XNA to DFW.
While the route will remain nine flights a day, American in September will begin using the 150-seat Airbus A320 on more of the flights. Most flights will continue to be on the 80-seat Embraer 175.
American in September will make 934 seats available on flights to DFW from XNA. By far, that’s the highest number of seats to any city. No. 2 is Charlotte with 553 seats. No. 3 Atlanta (478 seats) is where Delta Air Lines flies six times a day.
