American Airlines Ends Service To Long Beach Airport

January 6th 2023: American Airlines has announced they are pulling out of Long Beach Airport (LGB) completely. American Airlines only Long Beach service was from Phoenix operated by Mesa Airlines its until recently its commuter service operator.

The cancelation of service to Long Beach (LGB) seems to because of American Airlines and Mesa Airlines terminating there deal with each other for Mesa Airlines to operate American Airlines flights. Mesa Airlines has said it had issues with getting enough pilots and said it was losing money on its deal with American Airlines. Mesa Airlines original deal with American Airlines was originally scheduled to run until 2025.

I’m sure the Long Beach (LGB) service wasn’t a priority as there were serving only the one city anyways and they are a major carrier at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) so they could easily add flights from LAX to Phoenix if needed.

After the restart of full schedules after the pandemic the airlines added lots of new cities as all tried to grab new market share but now the airlines are starting to cut routes that less profitable. Because of the shortage of pilots its better to allocate pilots and planes to your most profitable routes. Mesa Airlines said they were running its routes for American Airlines at a loss so there isn’t much of an incentive for American Airlines to replace Mesa Airlines on many of these routes with their own pilots and equipment.

Long Beach Airport (LGB) in the last view years got a nice new terminal but after Jet Blue moved its West Coast hub from Long Beach (LGB) to Los Angeles International (LGB) it has struggled somewhat. Long Beach Airport (LGB) will have to change with the market in what is a very competitive market for flights with the numerous airports in Southern California.

white american airplane parked on airport
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