American Airlines is set to stop serving its transborder route from 
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) to General Mariano Escobedo International Airport (MTY) in Monterrey. The carrier began serving this route just over three years ago, but, following recent schedule changes, its final day of operation is now set to fall on December 1.
Given Phoenix’s relatively close proximity to the Mexican border, the country remains an important market for American outside of its Arizona hub. However, the route to Monterrey specifically appears to have performed poorly in recent times as far as load factors are concerned, despite only being served by small regional jets.
The End Of The Line
American launched its flights from Phoenix to Monterrey back in January 2023, marking the first time that this transborder route had been served in 19 years. At the time of the launch, the flights operated daily using Embraer E175 regional jets operated by American’s regional partners under the American Eagle brand, with flight times ideal for business and leisure flyers.
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Now, however, weekly schedule change data made available by Cirium, an aviation analytics company, shows that American Airlines no longer plans to serve this route after December 1. As recently as last week, American had been set to increase its five weekly flights on the route to a daily operation from November to at least June, but now no more rotations are planned after early December.
Simple Flying has reached out to American for further information regarding these cuts.
Low Load Factors On Small Aircraft
A key reason behind its decision to cut its route from Phoenix to Monterrey is likely the relatively low load factors that it has been experiencing on this corridor of late. Indeed, Cirium’s passenger data for the 12 months ending in April of this year showed that, across 319 departures on the 878-mile (1,413 km) route, only 13,739 of the possible 24,244 seats were filled, with a load factor of 56.67%.
Given that the Envoy Air Embraer E175 regional jets that operate these flights only have 76 seats onboard, this means that each service from Phoenix to Monterrey only carried around 43 flyers on average. The flights from Monterrey back to Phoenix were slightly better patronized, with 14,849 out of 24,320 seats on 320 flights being filled for an average load factor of 61.06%.
American Eagle’s Embraer E175 Layout | ||
|---|---|---|
Cabin | Seats – New Setup | Seats – Old Setup |
First Class | 12 | 12 |
Main Cabin Extra | 10 | 20 |
Main Cabin | 54 | 44 |
American Airlines Will Still Have A Healthy Mexican Route Network From Phoenix
Of course, just because American Airlines is set to cut its Monterrey flights from Phoenix does not mean its Mexican network as a whole from its hub will fall apart. Indeed, Cirium’s data for January 2027 shows that it still plans to serve ten airports in Mexico at the start of next year, as seen below. San Jose del Cabo is the most popular, with four flights a day throughout January.
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Elsewhere, Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta will both be served at least twice a day, while passengers can expect daily flights to the likes of Cancun, Hermosillo, Loreto, Mexico City, and Mazatlan. In terms of lower frequencies, American is set to operate two flights a week from Phoenix to Ixtapa and Manzanillo throughout January.
