American Airlines axes Hong Kong-Dallas service as another carrier pulls routes amid city’s tough Covid-19 aircrew rules

Hong Kong is losing its longest non-stop flight with American Airlines (AA) deciding to axe its Dallas route, as another carrier pulls services to a city that has some of the toughest border controls against Covid-19. The world’s largest airline revealed on Thursday that it planned to discontinue, delay or scale back several international flights ahead of the summer, blaming Boeing for being unable to deliver new aircraft and causing a shortfall in the availability of widebody jets. On top of AA withdrawing its Hong Kong route from March next year, which also ranks as the longest passenger flight on its schedule, services to Beijing, Shanghai and Sydney will also be “significantly” reduced, while the introduction of a new service from Seattle to Bangalore has been delayed. Vasu Raja, the airline’s chief revenue officer, told staff in a memo that the carrier would stop flying to Hong Kong, Scotland’s Edinburgh and Shannon in Ireland. “We’ll continue to evaluate these routes as more aircraft become available and would like to be able to serve them again in the future,” he wrote.<br/>