American Airlines drops six routes, and the hybrid lot is on fire as fuel prices remain airborne
United also "pruning" routes, including some LAX-IAD pairs
The clearest evidence that fuel prices are rewriting summer schedules came overnight from Fort Worth, where American Airlines confirmed to CBS News it is temporarily cutting six routes in August and September because of elevated jet fuel costs. United is also “pruning” its schedule.
The American casualties are mostly Los Angeles and Charlotte connections:
Los Angeles to Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh and Washington Dulles;
Charlotte to Ontario and Sacramento.
These are not minor routes. The Los Angeles-Washington Dulles route carries about 410,000 passengers per year, making it the 4th-busiest domestic route at IAD behind Denver, San Francisco and Atlanta.
United was the only mainline carrier flying it nonstop in that ranking, which is why American’s decision to walk away from LAX-IAD this August is noteworthy but not market-breaking — United still operates multiple daily nonstops, and travelers can connect via DFW, ORD, CLT or PHX.
United is keeping the route but is widely reported to be thinning frequencies on it as part of its 5 percent Q2/Q3 pullback, with red-eyes and midweek departures most exposed.
A few caveats worth noting:
That 409,700 figure counts passengers in both directions combined (origin-and-destination plus connecting traffic that touches both endpoints).
It is airport-pair data for IAD; it does not include LAX-DCA (Reagan National) or LAX-BWI, which together carry several hundred thousand more Washington-region travelers each year.
Pre-pandemic the LAX-IAD pair ran closer to 450,000-475,000 annually, so 2025 was a recovery year but still slightly below the 2018-2019 peak.
Just an “adjustment”
“American is not suspending any routes indefinitely as part of this adjustment,” a company spokesperson said in the CBS News report. Jet fuel typically accounts for 25 percent to 30 percent of an airline’s total costs, the report noted, and other carriers have either raised fares or tacked on jet-fuel surcharges; Delta has raised its baggage fees, citing “evolving global conditions.” European peers KLM and Lufthansa have also cut routes.
Back on the ground …
The other side of the fuel coin is showing up on car lots. Hybrid sales jumped 33 percent in May from a year earlier, according to Motor Intelligence figures cited by the Wall Street Journal, a “positive development in an otherwise sluggish new-car market.”
The newspaper attributed the surge to rising fuel costs “exacerbated by U.S.-Israel tensions in Iran.”
That dovetailed with one of the day’s more consequential auto-safety stories: Ford Motor Co. is recalling nearly 420,000 Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUVs from model years 2018 through 2022 because their front seat-belt retractors can unintentionally lock, preventing them from extending or retracting properly, the Associated Press reported. Ford has received two warranty claims, two field reports and knowledge of one injury. Owners can have the retractors inspected and replaced at no charge through any Ford or Lincoln dealer, and notification will arrive by mail; Ford customer service is reachable through the company’s recall line, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s hotline as a backup, per AP.