American Airlines announces significant changes to operations at DFW Airport to "improve passenger experience"
American Airlines announced significant changes to its planned operations at DFW Airport on Friday including making adjustments to its flight schedules. The airline expects the adjustment to improve the ability for passengers to make connecting flights.
"American...is fundamentally changing the way it does business at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport," the carrier said in an announcement posted to its website Friday. "The airline's customers will soon benefit from those changes in a meaningful way."
DFW Airport is the carrier's largest hub, with more than 30% of the 700,000 people who fly American each day connecting through the airport.
The plan includes expanding the number of flight groups, called "banks", that the airline has at DFW from 9 to 13. The move, which begins in April, will "provide more certainty" to the 100,000 customers who travel on the 930 flights at peak times at DFW, the carrier said.
"With this structural schedule change, customers will also benefit from more improved early-morning departure times compared to 2025," American said. "Specifically, they will experience more departure options in highly desired time windows and fewer early morning departures to DFW, which is especially good news for customers making morning connections through DFW."
American said it is also increasing the scheduled time between pushback from the departure gate to arrival at the destination gate to help guarantee more on-time arrivals.
"As the operating environment and our customers' expectations have evolved in the last 10 years, our approach at our largest and most impactful hub must also evolve," said Jim Moses, a senior vice president for American Airlines. "We're making this significant shift while maintaining the same breadth, depth and schedule quality our customers expect and depend on."
The longer flight blocks will lead to improved efficiency for baggage service, the airline said, helping make sure customers' luggage makes it to connecting flights on time.
American said it is committed to streamlining the airport security experience and is already working with the Transportation Security Administration to use facial recognition technology for more secure identity verification.