American Airlines adds flights, expects record-setting summer at Sky Harbor airport

American Airlines (Nasdaq: AAL), the largest commercial airline operating at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, is expecting to have its busiest summer in years.

For most the country’s airports, the summer travel season is the most hectic time of year, but for Sky Harbor summer months typically are slower because fewer tourists travel to the Valley when the temperatures peak. Despite the seasonal slowdown, American Airlines is expecting one of the more robust summers the airline has had in Phoenix since before the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We’re actually going to see more customers than we had last summer,” said Sophia Philis-Ortiz, American’s vice president of hub operations at Sky Harbor. “We’re really excited. We’re going to be servicing 3 million passengers on over 26,000 departures this summer.”

Across the entire American Airlines system, the carrier said it will fly more seats than any other summer on record and will have 10% more departures than during the summer of 2023.

Leading into the summer, American has had its best year to date at Sky Harbor, in terms of passenger count. For the first quarter of 2024, American has recorded 5.3 million total passengers at Sky Harbor, up 7.3% from 2023 and up 1.3% when compared to the first three months of 2019.

“We did have a great winter operation,” Philis-Ortiz said. “That only speaks for the summer that we’re going into, and we anticipate it to be just as great.”

The busiest day projected for American Airlines at Sky Harbor this summer will be July 7, on a Sunday, Philis-Ortiz said. The airline expects to operate 239 peak-day departures from its Phoenix hub.

American has added 10 new destinations across its network with two of them flying exclusively from Phoenix to Pasco, Washington and Tijuana, Mexico. The new flights and destinations, along with an overall increase in commercial aviation traffic are reasons leading to more passengers in 2024.

American’s largest competitor at Sky Harbor, Southwest Airlines, has also been making significant gains is passenger traffic so far in 2024 as well.