American Airlines has resumed operations to Australia for the first time since August, with the first LA-Sydney flight touching down on Thursday morning. Flight AA73 departed from LAX at 11:02pm on Tuesday 4 January local time, as the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner began its 14.5 hour journey across the Pacific ocean for the first time in 128 days. The aircraft, registration N835AN, then touched down at Sydney Kingsford Smith International slightly ahead of schedule, at 8:40am on Thursday. The return leg, flight AA72 from Sydney to LAX, departed Sydney at 11:43am, and is expected to land in California around 5:40am, also on Thursday 6 January. The airline will maintain a schedule of one return service between LAX and Sydney scheduled per day for now. The carrier, considered the world’s largest in both passenger carriage and fleet size, pulled out of the Australian market entirely at the end of August, after the Australian government slashed arrival caps by half, in order to gain control of its then-raging COVID-19 outbreak.<br/>