When American Airlines recently announced its resumption of nonstop flights between Charlotte and Barcelona, it hailed the move as another example of American expanding in Charlotte. But American actually continues to cut back on the number of flights and seats in Charlotte. That’s according to an analysis by The Charlotte Ledger, whose Tony Mecia joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: What data did you look at, and can you flesh it out a bit?
Tony Mecia: The Bureau of Transportation Statistics provides a lot of detailed information about flights, passengers and seats at airports. We looked at Charlotte, and in the last couple of years, American Airlines has slimmed down slightly its presence. The number of seats out of Charlotte is down about 12%. The number of flights is down about 7%. It's cut seats 16 out of 17 straight months through May 2026.
Terry: So those are some of the numbers. Why is American doing this?
Mecia: It's really putting a lot of its efforts and planes into Chicago to compete with United Airlines. They both have a hub in Chicago. So there's this battle for Chicago, and the analysts I talked with said, ‘Look, those planes, they've got to come from somewhere.’ Our analysis showed that a lot of them seem to be coming from Charlotte, or they're at least drawing Charlotte down while building Chicago up. I think there's also this idea — two years ago, it was the busiest year on record at Charlotte Douglas for passengers, and the concourses were really tight during the summer. There were a lot of delays. Operationally, American later said it was not ideal. So they've been kind of slimming down and trying to make sure that they're able to operate comfortably and have a good customer experience.
Terry: One more question about American before we move on. The airline says it will soon have more free snacks to choose from. "More” and “free” are not usually words I say when talking about air travel.
Mecia: Well, that's true. American is saying it wants to upgrade the passenger experience, and so they're trying to do things that are more appealing to customers. One of the things that they announced last week, they're introducing additional options for free snacks in the main cabin. This is going to start next month. The news is that they're keeping the sort of spicy thin cookies, but they're adding options. You're going to have options for bags of Goldfish, bags of chocolate chip cookies, and then it's also the return of snack mix, which they say is going to be a mix of mini-pretzels, bagel chips, and what they're calling "honey sesame sticks."
Terry: Over to UNC Charlotte now. It’s planning to open a cybersecurity lab in uptown. This comes amid the rise in A.I. and data centers. Is there a connection?
Mecia: I think there is a little bit of a connection. This is part of what's going to be a North Tryon tech hub. This is what they're calling a "cybersecurity digital engineering lab," and, yes, a future phase of it is going to have something to do with data centers. The idea, I think, is to work closely with some of the big companies in Charlotte — the banks, Duke Energy, Honeywell — on cybersecurity, at least at first. Then, obviously, the data center component, I think, is going to receive some attention there as well.
Terry: Finally, Charlotte’s Shalom Park says it's updating its security policy. What changes have they already made, and why? And what’s the latest change?
Mecia: You might recall last year, they said that they were going to implement facial recognition technology in order to upgrade security at Shalom Park, which has a couple of synagogues, a gym, recreational facilities, that sort of thing. The news that came out last week is that it now says they're going to add a perimeter fence and armed security officers. This comes as we've seen a rise in threats against synagogues and other Jewish institutions. There was an incident in January with some graffiti. So this is really trying to prevent some ugly incidents before they happen.
Support for BizWorthy comes from the law office of Robertson & Associates.
