American Airlines bucks 50-seater industry trend

American Airlines is bucking an industry-wide trend to retire 50-seater single-cabin aircraft and is re-introducing CRJ200s on at least ten domestic routes next year in partnership with its regional capacity provider Air Wisconsin flying under the American Eagle brand. According to schedules data at hand confirmed by an American Airlines spokesperson, the following routes from Chicago O'Hare will again see the smaller city hoppers from April 2023: Appleton, Flint, Dayton James M. Cox, Cedar Rapids, Omaha Eppley, Huntsville, Kalamazoo, Manhattan, Milwaukee General Mitchell, and Waterloo. This comes as Air Wisconsin switches back from United Airlines – which is phasing out single-cabin 50-seat E145s and CRJ-200s by 2026 – to American Airlines early next year under a new five-year capacity purchase agreement. Under its terms, Air Wisconsin may deploy up to sixty CRJ-200s under the American Eagle brand, starting with forty phased in monthly from March 2023 until October 2023. According to the ch-aviation fleets advanced module, Air Wisconsin owns sixty-three CRJ200LRs and one CRJ200ER. In April 2020, American Airlines had announced the retirement of all CRJ200s operated by regional partner PSA Airlines. <br/>