New Flights, Bigger Jets Coming to Fresno’s Booming Airport. Here’s When, Where, Why
American Airlines will soon fly many of the flights on its Fresno-Dallas route with bigger airliners, adding more seat capacity to the second-most-popular service at Fresno Yosemite International Airport.
American’s first flight with the 190-seat Airbus A321 aircraft on the Fresno-Dallas route will be a late-night flight on Thursday, March 2, supplanting one of the airline’s Boeing 737-800 jets, which can seat 172 passengers. The Airbus jets will be used on three of American’s 22 weekly round trips to and from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport through the first weekend in April.
Starting in April, American will increase its number of weekly flights to 24 round trips on the Fresno-Dallas route, and those flown by the A321s will jump to 13 each week — more than half of the flights on the route, according to American Airlines’ online schedule.
By mid-April, the Boeing 737-800s will remain on only one round trip per day, or seven out of the 24 weekly fights between Fresno and Dallas.
The net effect will be an increase in the number of seats available each week from Fresno to Dallas – 54 additional seats each week to start, then 234, and eventually 306 more seats than the current weekly capacity.
American Airlines flights carried about 171,000 passengers from Fresno to Dallas in the 12-month period from December 2021 through November 2022, according to data from the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That’s up from about 150,000 passengers from December 2020 through November 2021.
Passenger volume from Fresno to Dallas in the 12-month period was second behind only Las Vegas. The Fresno-Las Vegas route is served by two airlines, Southwest Airlines and Allegiant Air.
More flights to Phoenix
American will also make changes to its flights between Fresno and Phoenix in the coming months, adding flights and changing the mix of aircraft serving the route.
The airline currently offers three daily flights from Fresno to Sky Harbor International Airport, including one that’s operated by airline partner SkyWest using Bombardier CRJ700 65-seat regional jets and one operated by Envoy Air with 76-seat Embraer E175 jets along with one of its own mainline Boeing 737-800 172-seat jets.
American will boost its frequency to four daily fights starting March 7, adding a second SkyWest CRJ700 to the route. But by the summer it will downsize one of its flights from the Boeing 737-800 to the smaller Airbus A320, which has 150 seats.
For a week in late October and early November, a fifth daily flight will be offered by American even as it downsizes from the Airbus A320 to the 128-seat Airbus 319 on two of the trips, while keeping the SkyWest CRJ700s for three daily flights.
By Nov. 5, the airline’s daily schedule will settle back to four flights: one with the Airbus A319 and three with the SkyWest CRJ700s. It will mean a slight reduction in seat capacity — 323 seats each day, down from the 356 that will be available throughout the summer.
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