Airline Profile: American Airlines

The world's largest commercial carrier, American Airlines operates a world wide network of scheduled services to around 160 cities in Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, Canada, Mexico, and Latin America. With its regional affiliate, American Eagle, the global network extends to more than 250 cities. American was a founder member of the Oneworld global airline alliance.

History

Founded as American Airways, the operating company for the Aviation Corporation on 25 January 1930, although other predecessor carriers date back as far as 1921. In April 1934, American Airways became American Airlines.

American became the first commercial operator of the Douglas DC-3 on 25 June 1936. In the years leading up World War II war, American consolidated it domestic network. On 5 December 1945 American merged with American Overseas Airways (AOA) and began operating Transatlantic services for the first time. AOA was sold off to Pan Am on 23 September 1950.

American introduced the first ever transcontinental jet service on 25 January 1959.

American merged with Trans Caribbean Airways in March 1970, thereby expanding its existing Caribbean network, while transpacific services via Honolulu to Australia and New Zealand were introduced in August 1970.

Transatlantic services began in May 1983 with a route between Dallas/Fort Worth and London Gatwick.

From 1984, a network of regional airlines was established to feed American’s mainline services under the “American Eagle” brand

American purchased AirCal in 1986 and merged the carrier into its own operations on 1 July 1987.

On 15 October 1998, American became the first airline to offer electronic ticketing throughout its entire world-wide network and was a founder member of the Oneworld global airline alliance, with British Airways, Air Canada, Cathay Pacific and Qantas in September 1999.

American completed the purchase in February 1999 of Reno Air, whose operations were fully integrated on 31 August 1999, and in 2001, purchased the assets of TWA.

Fleet

• 23x Airbus A300
• 77x Boeing 737
• 124x Boeing 757
• 73x Boeing 767
• 51x Boeing 777
• 186x McDonnel Douglas MD-82
• 86x McDonnell Douglas MD-83

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