American Airlines has wiped three cities off its route map in a single year, and the knock-on effects matter more than the cuts themselves. The Fort Worth carrier has fully exited Doha in Qatar, Santa Maria in California, and Tijuana in Mexico — and in two of those cases, no other US airline has stepped in.
The Doha exit came first, in March. American had been flying daily from Philadelphia to Hamad International on a Boeing 787-9, positioning its East Coast hub as a gateway to the Gulf. Ongoing instability in the Middle East killed the route, and American handed the baton to its Oneworld partner Qatar Airways, which now flies the same Philadelphia route and remains the only airline with nonstop service between Qatar and the United States. For travellers, the practical upshot is minimal: you can still reach Doha from Philadelphia, just on a Qatari plane.
The two other cuts are purely commercial. American had launched Phoenix–Santa Maria in October, running a regional CRJ900 up to twice daily through SkyWest as a feeder for its Arizona hub. Demand never materialised, and the service — which lasted under a year — was gone by May. That leaves Santa Maria, a small airport in Santa Barbara County, with no legacy carrier at all: Allegiant Air and its Las Vegas flights are now the only game in town.
Tijuana followed in August. American began flying there from Phoenix in early 2024, the first and only US airline to serve the airport, betting on the heavy cross-border trade ties between Arizona and the Mexican city next door to San Diego. Low demand ended that experiment, and the CRJ900s moved to busier routes. Tijuana remains one of Mexico's busiest airports, but it now has zero US network-carrier service — domestic Mexican operators, many of them low-cost, carry the load instead.
Why should a traveller care? If you're flying from the US into Baja California, your options just narrowed: cross through San Diego on the ground, connect via a Mexican carrier, or fly into Tijuana on a Mexican airline. Santa Maria residents on the Central Coast have lost their only legacy-carrier link and now rely on Allegiant or drive to larger airports. And Philadelphia–Doha passengers should double-check who's operating their flight — it's still daily, just under a different logo.
The pattern here is a classic network rationalisation: one route cut for safety and geopolitics, two for weak bookings, with aircraft redeployed where they earn more. For route nerds it's a reminder that even a giant like American will abandon a whole airport when the numbers don't work — and that 'served by a US major' is never a guarantee.
