{"id":21856,"date":"2025-06-12T22:40:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T22:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/american-airlines-to-use-larger-planes-to-service-durango-airport\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:09:11","slug":"american-airlines-to-use-larger-planes-to-service-durango-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/american-airlines-to-use-larger-planes-to-service-durango-airport\/","title":{"rendered":"American Airlines to use larger planes to service Durango airport"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A new roofline is seen on Tuesday on the north end of the Durango-La Plata County Airport. Construction on the first portion of the Phase 1B project is progressing on schedule. The new baggage claim and arrivals hall area is projected to open in late summer or early fall. Once completed, the next portion of the overall project will include a new airline boarding gate, new concessions and a new TSA screening checkpoint, said Tony Vicari, director of the Durango-La Plata County Airport. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

American Airlines will begin flying the 128-seat Airbus A319 on its direct flights between Durango and Dallas on Sept. 23.<\/p>\n

The decision to add a larger airplane to the twice daily direct route between Durango and Dallas coincides with the growing air traffic between the two cities, said DRO Aviation Director Tony Vicari.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur market has grown significantly in terms of passenger traffic over the last several years,\u201d Vicari said. \u201c\u2026 We were up over 30% from our pre-pandemic numbers. And then so far here in 2025 we\u2019re up another 11 to 12% through the first five months of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vicari explained that the A319 aircraft is nearly twice the size of the regional jets that American Airlines typically uses to service DRO, which are usually between 65 and 76 seats.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy swapping out the smaller regional jets and flying in the larger Airbus mainline aircraft, it allows American to add more seat capacity into Dallas and connecting through their market,\u201d Vicari said.<\/p>\n

Dallas, where American Airlines, is based, is one of the largest connecting hubs in the world and has historically been the second largest origin and destination market for DRO, behind Denver, Vicari stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving that added capacity creates more options for the traveler,\u201d Vicari said. \u201cIt also can continue to assist in creating competitive airfare. The more supply that\u2019s created in a market \u2013 more seats in this case \u2013 just means that there is more demand, which tends to allow for different price points on tickets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vicari said the larger demand for tickets coupled with the higher number of seats available through the new aircraft doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that tickets prices will be lower, but rather that there will be more flight options, more comfortable planes to fly on and more competitive price points for the airlines servicing DRO.<\/p>\n

United Airlines made a similar move in 2023, when it began utilizing the Airbus A319 and A320 aircraft on its direct flights to and from Denver International Airport, Vicari said.<\/p>\n

American\u2019s implementation of the A319 coincides with DRO\u2019s expansion projects, meant to make the airport more accommodating to the growing volume of travelers.<\/p>\n

\u201cPassenger traffic has grown a lot over the last handful of years, and in response to that, we\u2019re in the midst of a multi year, multi phase terminal expansion project,\u201d Vicari stated.<\/p>\n

As part of its $30 million-plus expansion project, the airport will unveil its new baggage claim and arrival space in August, Vicari said. DRO is currently expanding its terminal building and adding more spots to its surface parking areas, which will unfold in phases over the next three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

128-seat Airbus A319 will make trips between DRO and Dallas-Fort Worth <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[915,28,1469],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango-la-plata-county-airport","tag-headlines","tag-travel-and-commuting"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77486,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21856\/revisions\/77486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21856"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}