American Airlines has doubled next summer's Dallas Fort Worth to Rome Fiumicino flights from 1 daily to 2 daily. While it'll be for the peak season only, but it'll be first time the 5,614-mile (9,034km) route, which started in May 2017, has had 2 daily flights.

It means that American will serve the Italian capital up to 7 daily next summer, its highest number of flights to date. Rome becomes American's second most-served European airport after London Heathrow, up from fourth in summer 2019.

American doubles Dallas-Rome

Starting on June 1st and running until September 5th, American will have 2 daily Dallas-Rome services. Also on June 1st, American, the world's largest airline, returns Paris CDG to 2 daily, a frequency last seen nearly three years ago in January 2020.

American serves Dallas-Rome summer-seasonally, with the existing service resuming on March 26th. Its Rome operation is detailed below, with all times local:

1. Dallas Fort Worth-Rome: AA240, 14:40-08:00+1 (10h 20m block time)
2. Dallas Fort Worth-Rome: AA290, 18:25-11:45+1 (10h 20m) -New
3. Rome-Dallas Fort Worth: AA239, 10:00-14:50 (11h 50m)
4. Rome-Dallas Fort Worth: AA289, 13:45-18:35 (11h 50m) -New

It'll use the 234-seat 787-8 on the new service (AA290/AA289). Meanwhile, the larger 285-seat 787-9 will replace the 777-200ER on the original daily. The 777 was scheduled to operate until the most recent schedule update. It means that, during next summer's peak, American will have 519 seats for sale between Dallas and Rome each day and in each direction.

Click here for Dallas-Rome flights.

332,000 Dallas-Rome passengers

According to the US Department of Transportation, American carried 332,595 roundtrip passengers between Dallas and Rome from May 2017 until July 2022, the latest data to which I have access. In this period, its average seat load factor (SLF) was 74%, obviously impacted by the pandemic.

As such, it's useful to look at 2019 data. That year, it carried 96,412 passengers on its April-October service with an SLF of 86%. April pulled it down (75%), while June (95%), July (90%) and September (90%) offset it. It's hardly a surprise that it has doubled June-September frequency, but let's hope it won't be too many to fill that it has a detrimental impact on route performance.

Where did Rome passengers go?

According to booking data, an estimated 30% of Dallas-Rome passengers were point-to-point; they only traveled between the two cities. It wasn't a big local market. A further 8% transited Rome Fiumicino.

Of course, it was primarily about transiting over Dallas Fort Worth, with approximately 62% of passengers doing so, the majority of whom had the US as the point-of-sale. Los Angeles over Dallas to/from Rome was the most popular market, then Houston Intercontinental, Phoenix, Denver, San Antonio, San Francisco, Albuquerque, Monterrey (Mexico), San Diego, and Austin.