American Airlines will discontinue all service out of the Long Beach Airport, the company announced on Friday, Jan. 6, with the airline’s last flights set to depart from LGB in February.
An American Airlines jet at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, CA on Monday, August 8, 2022. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
“We appreciate the great relationship we’ve enjoyed with American Airlines and understand their tough business decision during these challenging times,” said LGB director Cynthia Guidry in a Friday statement. “We look forward to welcoming them back to Long Beach in the future.”
The airline will cease operations out of the Long Beach terminal on Feb. 28, the company said Friday, because the route is not meeting performance expectations.
“We are proactively reaching out to customers with travel plans beyond Feb. 28 to offer alternative travel arrangements,” the airline said Friday.
Though American Airlines also shuttered service at three other airports across the country in 2022 due to a nationwide pilot shortage, the decision to end service at LGB is purely based on financials.
“The reasoning is not operational performance,” American Airlines spokesman Derek Walls said Friday. “In this regard, it’s more so financial.”
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American flights currently account for about 6% of the total operation at LGB, with three daily flights between Long Beach and the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport in Arizona.
Those three flight slots will be made available to carriers on the airport’s waiting list, according to LGB spokesperson Kate Kuykendall — though it will take at least one month to determine which airline will take them over.
“That will take time to sort out because we will need to officially notify carriers of the availability of slots,” Kuykendall said, “and then they typically have 30 days to respond.”
American, meanwhile, will continue to operate more than 145 daily flights to 52 worldwide destinations from the Los Angeles International, Hollywood Burbank, Ontario International, and John Wayne Airports without interruption.