American Airlines brings back LaGuardia-Boston flights after 3-year absence

Just days after JetBlue filed plans to exit perhaps the most iconic domestic business route, American Airlines is coming to fill the void.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier filed plans over the weekend to increase its flying on the 184-mile route from New York’s LaGuardia Airport (LGA) to Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) to up to eight daily frequencies, as first seen in Cirum schedules and later confirmed by a carrier spokesperson.

The increased frequencies will launch May 5 and operate throughout the year. American will fly up to eight daily flights on weekdays between LGA and BOS and up to four daily flights during weekends.

The airline will exclusively fly dual-cabin regional jets on the New York-to-Boston route, meaning that flyers can enjoy first-class recliners (with limited, if any, inflight service) during the short 45-minute flight.

In a statement confirming the move, a carrier spokesperson shared that “American is continuously evaluating our network to suit the needs of customers who are increasingly looking for more convenient flights between New York and Boston.”

Before these increases, American had been flying up to four daily flights on this route, making this a major frequency increase for the carrier. In fact, it comes just a few days after JetBlue announced that it would stop flying between LGA and BOS, a route that the New York-based carrier had operated since October 2016.

JetBlue is undergoing a strategic transformation to regain profitability, and as part of its JetForward plan, the airline is refocusing on its core network demographic: leisure flying from the Northeast and South Florida.

A route like New York to Boston no longer fits within JetBlue’s updated strategy, so despite how iconic it might be, JetBlue has decided to pull the plug on it.

For American, this move is the latest in the storied history of flights between LGA and BOS.

This long-standing service has undergone multiple evolutions since it launched in the 1960s. For years, it was known as a “shuttle” route, offering near-hourly service between the two cities from the wee hours of the morning until late at night.

But after about 60 years of service, American exited the market in January 2022. At the time, American let JetBlue take over the route as part of the now-defunct Northeast Alliance. From late 2020 to mid-2023, American (and JetBlue) launched new routes from the Northeast, such as Boston to Louisville, Kentucky, and New York to Monterrey, Mexico, and in many markets, consolidated duplicative flying to just one carrier.

The alliance let American flyers earn miles and enjoy their perks, even when flying on JetBlue planes from New York to Boston and beyond (and vice versa).

But once the alliance was deemed uncompetitive and was subsequently disbanded in 2023, American reentered the market. However, it did so with only four daily flights — a far cry from the previous near-hourly frequencies.

And now, just over a year later, we’ve come full circle. JetBlue is out, and American is back with a bang on one of the country’s most iconic business routes.

What remains to be seen is where American is getting the slots to operate these new flights from. As one of the nation’s most capacity-constrained airports, operating at LGA requires slots (or takeoff and landing permissions) for each flight.

Airlines can’t just pick up these slots on an ad hoc free-market basis, and it’s usually a zero-sum game of adding flights at LGA. Seemingly, the airline will need to cut flights elsewhere to make this increased service work.

But for now, no cuts have been filed, so we’ll have to stay tuned to see where these slots are coming from.

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