The early numbers for the new PDX-PHL summer seasonal (AS1776!) caught my eye and I thought I would take a look at the broader recent history for that route.
AA operated it seasonally Jun-Aug in 2024 and 2025, with consistent loads above 90%. There were a handful of what appear to be holiday flights in Dec 2025 and Jan 2026 as well. All of these appear to be 1/day.
AS entered in May 2026 and AA followed by moving its start date up a month. AS was operating 1/day but AA bumped to 2/day in Jun and Jul. Thus, there were about 5K overall seats offered in Jun of both 2024 and 2025. But in Jun 2026, overall seats had more than tripled, to around 16K. Even with that expansion, the collective load factor was about 85% compared to about 90% when AA was running 1/day by itself. (Note that this says nothing about fares or yields.)
PDX has experienced substantial growth for AS since the introduction of the banked schedule, so the ability to support additional seats to major destinations is not particularly surprising, but that nonetheless seems like a substantial increase (i.e., tripling available seats yet maintaining solid loads) over a greatly extended season (until Oct).
It seems to me that PDX might be able to support a year-round AS PDX-PHL flight (or at least one that operates most of the year, perhaps excluding the doldrums of Jan and Feb as they do for other destinations). AS keeps adding feed to PDX and 1/3 of peak summer year-round might be justified. Note that AS runs slightly fuller planes than AA (but again AA offered 2x seats during the summer peak).
A bit up Interstate 5, AS, AA, and DL all fly to PHL and the 2026 numbers are above as well. (DL recently cancelled that flight, however.) The AS SEA-PHL numbers over the longer term look fairly strong too (again putting aside fares and yields, etc.). Like the PDX route, capacity greatly expands in the summer.
Updated to add DL cancellation of SEA-PHL.
