The official end of the Northern Hemisphere summer this year is Sunday, September 22. Airline summer traditionally runs through Labor Day. But American Airlines has ended its summer. As aviation watchdog JonNYC explains, American Airlines is beginning to rotate planes out of service.
Summer is peak travel, and that means airlines get ready. They make sure that maintenance is done on their aircraft, and it’s all hands on deck. Then when summer is over, they don’t need as many planes in service and more can return to maintenance. That means periodic heavy checks, and it also means reconfigurations. They can have more planes out at the same time, and they can be out longer.
American Airlines has started that process.
The reason for this is simple. Earlier school year starts have shortened American’s summer season. Some Texas schools actually started this week! Many start next week. This is actually common across the Sun Belt where American has focused.
Growing up in New York the start of school was always the day after Labor Day, so my mind can barely comprehend this. But school’s back in some places, which means families aren’t traveling as much, and American expected air travel to begin to quiet earlier as a result.