American Airlines Further Strengthens Dallas-Fort Worth Flagship Hub

American Airlines has announced a series of improvements at their DFW hub, including a reimagined schedule with adjusted flight times and improved departure times to drive greater certainty for customers.

Doubling Down on DFW: American Further Strengthens Their Flagship Hub – Courtesy American Airlines

On Friday (December 26, 2025), American Airlines announced that they are fundamentally changing the way they do business at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), the airline’s largest hub.  DFW has an outsized impact on the rest of the airline’s operation and on the journeys of the nearly 700,000 customers every day across their global network.  More customers and more bags travel and connect through DFW every day than any other airport in American’s network, with over 30 percent of all daily connecting customers and daily connecting checked bags traveling through the airline’s hometown airport.  American is investing millions of dollars to fortify DFW, which will deliver a smoother more seamless airport experience, greater certainty to schedules and connections, and improves irregular operations resilience.

In Friday’s announcement, American Airlines’ SVP – Dallas-Fort Worth Operations, Jim Moses, said,

“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.  We’re making this significant shift while maintaining the same breadth, depth and schedule quality our customers expect and depend on.  That means good things for American’s customers, our team members and just about everyone who depends on the airline.

“Our investment in operational resilience extends beyond our DFW schedule.  We know the negative impact flight diversions have on our customers.  They’re also incredibly disruptive to the broader airline, especially as they create congestion at airports which often limits our ability to get aircraft to a gate and importantly, deplane customers.”

For over a decade, American’s schedule at DFW has been concentrated across nine banks, or large clusters of flights across the operating day. As all airline bank structures do, this times large groups of flights together, coordinating arrivals and departures, and ultimately, coordinating quick and seamless connections.  Starting in April, and visible in the airline’s schedules starting December 27th, American’s DFW operation is evolving to a 13-bank structure, providing more certainty to the airline’s average 100,000 peak daily customers traveling on the more than 930 average peak DFW daily departing flights.  With this structural schedule change, customers will also benefit from more improved early-morning departure times compared to 2025.

The new bank structure keeps nearly all existing connection opportunities in addition to creating new opportunities across the airline’s most-connected hub airport.  Just as customer connections will improve, so, too, connections for checked bags.  That means even more bags arriving with customers, and in many cases, arriving ahead of customers.  American has doubled down on checked bag management over the past few years, and this fundamental shift at DFW further strengthens the work already being experienced by customers.  Additionally, by reflowing American’s DFW schedule, the airline is helping make the airspace around the DFW metroplex even more efficient, meaning fewer air traffic delays and more on-time departures and arrivals for customers.

These changes are on top of a number of other critical investments to further enhance the customer experience when traveling through American’s Flagship hub, and importantly, enabling future growth, which means more flight and destination options for our customers.  This includes modernizing American’s facilities and airport terminals, including Terminal A and C Pier extensions, adding nine incremental gates.  American is also expanding their DFW footprint with the addition of Terminal F.  When completed in 2030, the airline will operate all 31 new gates in the terminal with increased widebody capacity, state of the art baggage technology and dedicated premium lounges, Flagship check-in and a new U.S. Customs facility.

Additionally, when weather disruptions happen in the future, this new schedule structure will provide far greater resilience and less adverse impact, allowing American to recover even quicker and get customers on their way as soon as the weather clears.  American is also investing millions of dollars in additional remote deplaning capability (everything from equipment and bussing to staffing) that allows the airline to most importantly, divert fewer flights away from DFW.

Source: American Airlines