For the third time in a little more than a week, an airline is re-establishing a nonstop route at Northwest Arkansas National Airport.
This time it’s American Airlines going once a day from XNA to Philadelphia. The first flight departs Dec. 19.
XNA announced the new route on social media this morning. The announcement came just a few days after Delta Air Lines re-established flights flown years ago from XNA to Detroit and Salt Lake City.
The three routes added by Delta and American in the past few days are not leading destinations from XNA. Federal data shows about 23 people a day fly from XNA to visit Philadelphia and 23 more go to Salt Lake City. About 15 go to Detroit. That means the flights are likely to be filled by passengers returning home after visiting Northwest Arkansas or Arkansas fliers who are making connections in Salt Lake, Philadelphia or Detroit as they travel to other places.
The busiest final destination from XNA without nonstop service is San Francisco. The same federal data shows 48 people a day traveled there between April 2023 and March this year. United Airlines previously provided that service, but it was canceled in early 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic had most airlines pulling back on their service worldwide.
American has two notable differences in how it’ll do Philadelphia compared to its approach in 2019. The original Philly route lasted a few months before it was cancelled.
The most important difference involves the departure time. The plane leaves XNA at 2 p.m., and that’s about two hours earlier than five years ago.
The earlier departure time makes it possible for Northwest Arkansas passengers to be on the ground in Philadelphia by 5:30 p.m., leaving enough time for the passengers to catch evening departures on American for London, Paris, Doha, Madrid and a dozen other international cities.
The other change is a small one. Instead of using the 76-seat Embraer 175 like it did in 2019, American is going with the 65-seat Canadair CRJ700. While having more seats has value, it’s important from a business perspective to keep the planes full and Northwest Arkansas travelers will have an easier time keeping the smaller plane near capacity.
