The airline says at least seven additional lounges are planned over the following several years. This will put its initial network at 11 or more locations.
It goes without saying that these developments are another massive shift for Southwest, which has changed a lot about its experience in recent years. The airline has introduced assigned seating and extra-legroom seats, ended its long-standing two-free-checked-bags policy for most customers, and increasingly added products aimed at customers willing to pay more for their trip.
Now, that experience will extend into the airport.
Southwest’s First Lounges Are Coming to 4 Airports
Construction is already underway on Southwest’s first four lounges at:
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS)
Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI)
Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)
Nashville International Airport (BNA)
Southwest expects to begin welcoming guests in late 2027, though it hasn’t provided opening dates for the individual locations.
JOHN CHASE / ISTOCK
The airline is working with Chase on the lounges and plans to draw on the bank’s existing Chase Sapphire Lounge network. Southwest says the spaces will combine its own approach to hospitality with locally inspired dining, more sophisticated design, and amenities and travel benefits already found in Chase’s lounges.
For now, that’s about as specific as Southwest is getting.
The airline hasn’t revealed the size or exact location of the first lounges, what amenities each will offer, or where the next seven or more locations will be. We don’t have renderings yet, either.
The initial airport choices do offer a sense of where Southwest is starting. Austin, Baltimore, Honolulu, and Nashville are all significant Southwest markets.
And with at least 11 lounges now in the pipeline, this is intended to become a network rather than a handful of experiments.
A New Premium Southwest Credit Card Is Coming, Too
Southwest will also introduce a new premium Rapid Rewards credit card from Chase in 2027. The card is slated to provide access to the new lounges.
That’s just about all we know about the card for now.
Southwest hasn’t announced its annual fee, welcome offer, other benefits, or exactly how lounge access will work. We also don’t yet know whether there will be other ways to enter the lounges, including for customers with certain Southwest tickets or elite status.
There are also some interesting questions about how the Southwest and Chase lounge networks will overlap.
Southwest hasn’t said whether Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholders will receive access to Southwest lounges or whether holders of the new Southwest card will have any access to Chase Sapphire Lounges.
Those details will come later. But the new card and lounge network indicate that Southwest is continuing its push to offer more to customers willing to pay for a premium experience.
American Airlines has been preparing to say goodbye to Flagship First for years. Until now, we just didn’t know when the airline would make it official.
On September 2, American announced that Flagship First will no longer be available for purchase on its Boeing 777-300ERs for travel beginning November 19, 2026. The airline will then stop selling Flagship First on its premium transcontinental routes for travel beginning March 28, 2027.
That will bring an end to American’s dedicated first-class cabin and leave the newer Flagship Suite as the airline’s top premium product.
It’ll also mark the end of an era for U.S. airlines.
American is the last U.S. carrier to offer a true international first-class cabin, something Delta and United abandoned years ago in favor of increasingly elaborate business-class products.
Flagship First Is Disappearing From the 777-300ER
American currently offers Flagship First on two aircraft: the Boeing 777-300ER used on long-haul international routes and the Airbus A321T used primarily on premium transcontinental routes from New York (JFK) and Boston (BOS) to the West Coast.
The airline has been working toward eliminating both versions for some time.
TYLER GLATT / POINTS INSIDER
American’s 20 Boeing 777-300ERs are being retrofitted with new interiors that replace the eight-seat Flagship First cabin with a much larger business-class cabin. The work is expected to be completed by mid 2027.
The new configuration has 70 Flagship Suite seats with privacy doors, 44 Premium Economy seats, 30 Main Cabin Extra seats, and 186 standard Main Cabin seats.
The first retrofitted 777-300ER enters commercial service on September 2 between New York (JFK) and Buenos Aires (EZE) as flight AA953.
American says Flagship First will no longer be available for purchase on the 777-300ER for travel beginning November 19.
Transcontinental First Class Gets a Few More Months
Flagship First will hang around a little longer on American’s transcontinental routes.
The Airbus A321T has an unusual three-cabin configuration with Flagship First, Flagship Business, and economy. But that premium-heavy configuration is also on its way out.
American is reconfiguring the A321Ts with a more standard layout as Airbus A321XLRs take over premium transcontinental flying.
The XLR still has a premium layout, but there’s no separate first-class cabin. Instead, it has 20 Flagship Suite seats, followed by 12 Premium Economy seats and 123 seats in Main Cabin.
But the XLR’s Flagship Suite isn’t identical to the version found on American’s new Boeing 787-9P (the P stands for premium) and retrofitted 777-300ER. The XLR requires a different seat design because of its narrower cabin.
As more XLRs enter the fleet, American says Flagship First will no longer be sold on transcontinental routes for travel beginning March 28, 2027.
That means Flagship First will disappear in two stages: first from international flying this November, then from the transcontinental network next March.
Flagship Suite Becomes American’s Top Seat
American revealed plans years ago that would ultimately eliminate Flagship First as it introduced its new Flagship Suite.
What’s new is that the airline has finally put dates on the transition that’s already well underway.
TYLER GLATT / POINTS INSIDER
Once Flagship First disappears, Flagship Suite will officially take over as American’s top long-haul product.
In many ways, the change makes sense. The differences between first and business class have been shrinking for years. Today’s best business-class seats offer privacy doors, direct aisle access, better bedding, and many of the features that once helped set international first class apart.
But that doesn’t mean there won’t be some nostalgia for Flagship First. American is the last U.S. airline to offer a true international first-class cabin, and its retirement will bring that era to an end.
So for anyone hoping to experience Flagship First one last time, or for the first time, the clock is now officially ticking.
JetBlue is getting ready to launch its take on first class. And now we know more about what the experience will look like.
The airline revealed new details Tuesday about BlueFirst, its domestic first-class product. The first aircraft with BlueFirst will take off later this year, and tickets will become available to book sometime this fall.
Where BlueFirst will fly first is still a mystery. But JetBlue says initial routes and more details about booking availability will be announced later this year.
What to Expect From JetBlue BlueFirst
BlueFirst will feature a fairly traditional domestic first-class layout, with seats arranged 2-2 in the first few rows of the plane. They’ll offer five inches of recline and up to seven inches more legroom than JetBlue’s standard Main seats.
Each seat will have a 13.3-inch entertainment screen with Bluetooth connectivity, plus USB-A, USB-C, and standard power outlets. Free inflight Fly-Fi isn’t going anywhere.
But as JetBlue executives told Points Insider at the recent opening of the airline’s Boston BlueHouse, the goal isn’t to copy what everyone else is doing in first class.
JetBlue sees an opportunity to put its own spin on the experience while sticking to what executives described as “affordable luxury.”
SPONDYLOLITHESIS / ISTOCK
The seat itself doesn’t stray far from the domestic first-class formula. Some of JetBlue’s more interesting twists come with the service.
BlueFirst customers will be able to order food and drinks from the seatback screen. A new “Mixologist Mode” will even let passengers build a cocktail by choosing a spirit, mixer, and flavorings before sending the order to the crew.
On flights of at least 899 miles, meals will include an entrée, side, and dessert served in a bento-inspired box. Premium snacks will be available on every flight, while passengers on overnight flights will get a blanket and snooze kit.
“Domestic first class has become easy to predict. We think it’s time for a fresh take,” JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty said. “Customers are increasingly looking for more premium experiences, and BlueFirst gives them an elevated experience that feels distinctly JetBlue.”
BlueFirst also comes with the more familiar first-class perks, including Group 1 boarding, dedicated overhead bin space, priority check-in and baggage delivery, two free checked bags, and expedited security lanes at more than 30 airports.
JetBlue will share more about Mosaic perks for BlueFirst closer to its arrival.
Another Piece of JetBlue’s Premium Push
BlueFirst isn’t meant to replace Mint. Instead, it fills a big hole by giving JetBlue a bona fide premium cabin on routes where it doesn’t offer lie-flat seats.
Passengers will be able to book BlueFirst on routes not served by a Mint-equipped aircraft.
It’s also the latest piece of a much bigger shift for the airline. JetBlue now has BlueHouse lounges in New York (JFK) and Boston (BOS). And BlueFirst brings that premium push onto more of its airplanes.
We still don’t know where BlueFirst will debut or, more importantly, how much it will cost.
And the price may ultimately tell us just as much about whether JetBlue can deliver on its vision of “affordable luxury” as the cocktails and bigger seats do.
If you’ve spent any time reading about points and miles, you’ve probably seen some enormous numbers.
Earn 75,000 points. Earn 100,000 points. Earn 150,000 points. Apply for this card. Transfer points here. Book this business class seat that normally costs $8,000.
Some of that can be useful. But it can also make getting started much harder than it needs to be.
If you want to use points to travel more or spend less on the trips you’re already taking, you don’t need to begin by figuring out which credit card has the biggest welcome offer. You don’t need to become a frequent flyer, either.
You should, however, start with the trip itself.
Where do you want to go? Who do you want to visit? Which trips are getting too expensive? What would you do if airfare or hotels cost a little less?
Once you know what you want points to accomplish, you can figure out which rewards could help you do it and how to earn them.
That’s a points strategy.
And it can be a lot simpler than the internet makes it look.
What Does Traveling With Points Mean?
Airlines and hotel companies have loyalty programs that are free to join. American Airlines has AAdvantage, United Airlines has MileagePlus, Marriott has Bonvoy, Hyatt has World of Hyatt, and so on.
Each program has its own rewards currency that’s called some variation of points or miles. And once you have enough, you can use those rewards to book travel instead of paying the full cash price.
OZGYRCANKAYA / ISTOCK
Say you want to visit family and the round-trip flight costs $500. You might find that the same trip can also be booked for 20,000 airline miles plus $5.60 in taxes.
You have a choice. Pay $500 or use miles and keep most of that cash in your pocket.
The ticket booked with miles is called an award ticket. Hotels work much the same way. A room selling for $300 might also be available for 25,000 hotel points.
That’s the foundation of points travel. You’re earning another type of currency that can be used to pay for some of your travel.
And despite the name, you do not need to be a frequent flyer to participate in a frequent flyer program.
You can join an airline loyalty program even if you fly once or twice a year. You don’t need elite status, and you don’t have to regularly fly an airline to earn its miles.
Plenty of miles are earned without going anywhere.
You Don’t Have to Travel to Earn Points
Flying can earn airline miles, and hotel stays can earn hotel points. But those are just two ways rewards make their way into your accounts.
Airlines and hotels have partnerships that let you earn points through things you may already be doing.
Shopping portals are a good example. Instead of going directly to a retailer’s website, you start at an airline’s shopping portal and click through to the same store. If the retailer is participating, your purchase can earn airline miles in addition to whatever rewards you were already getting from the purchase.
Airlines also have dining programs that can award miles when you eat at participating restaurants. There are promotions, rental car partnerships, hotel offers, and plenty of other opportunities to pick up rewards along the way.
Credit cards are another way to earn them.
MILORAD KRAVIC / ISTOCK
Some cards earn rewards with a particular airline or hotel company. A Marriott card earns Marriott Bonvoy points, for example, while an airline card earns miles in that airline’s program.
Other cards earn rewards through programs run by banks such as American Express, Capital One, Chase, and Citi. Those points can work differently because you may have more than one way to use them.
We’ll get to that.
For now, know that you don’t need to choose between flying constantly and opening credit cards. Points can come from travel, everyday spending, shopping, dining, promotions, and other parts of the loyalty ecosystem.
The more important question is which points make sense for you to earn.
Start With Where You Want to Go
Before applying for a new credit card, signing up for every loyalty program you can find, or chasing a particular kind of point, think about your travel.
What would you like points to help you do?
Maybe you want to fly to see your kids more often, but tickets routinely cost $500. Maybe you’re trying to take a family of four to Europe next summer. Perhaps you mostly take road trips, and hotels are the expense you’d most like to reduce.
Or maybe there isn’t one big trip. You’d just like to take another weekend away every once in a while without every trip putting a dent in the monthly budget.
Those goals can lead to very different strategies.
PYORSKY / ISTOCK
Imagine you visit family three times per year and airfare typically costs $500 round trip. That’s $1,500 per person each year for a trip you already know you want to take.
If those flights can sometimes be booked for a reasonable number of miles instead, you’ve found a job for points. Your goal isn’t to accumulate a million miles or recreate somebody else’s business class trip from Instagram. It’s to make those family visits less expensive.
Someone trying to take four people to Europe has a different problem. So does someone whose biggest travel expense is hotels.
Figure out the travel first. Then work backward.
Don’t Let Someone Else Pick Your Points Strategy
This is where it’s worth being skeptical of some of what you read online.
There are excellent websites, newsletters, and creators covering points and miles. There are also a lot of headlines telling you that a 100,000-point credit card offer is incredible and that you should apply before it disappears.
Sometimes it is a very good offer.
But a big number doesn’t tell you whether those points will help with the trips you want to take.
Credit cards are part of the points ecosystem, and you’ll find information about them on PointsYeah, too. But it’s also important to understand the incentives at work. Websites can earn money when readers apply for cards through their links, which is worth remembering when every new offer starts to sound like something you can’t afford to miss.
That doesn’t mean you should ignore the experts. It means their strategy doesn’t automatically need to become yours.
A 100,000-point offer could be nearly useless for your travel. A much less exciting opportunity to earn rewards that repeatedly save you $500 on trips to see family could be far more valuable.
Start with your game, not theirs.
Look at How You Travel Now and How You Want to Travel
The rewards you’re earning today may not line up with the travel you want to do tomorrow.
Suppose you tend to fly Frontier or Allegiant because they’re inexpensive from your home airport. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes buying the cheap ticket is exactly the right move.
But what happens when you want to visit somewhere those airlines don’t fly?
Say you want to visit family in Wilmington, North Carolina. If the airline whose rewards you’ve been collecting doesn’t serve Wilmington, those points aren’t going to solve that particular problem.
SEAN PAVONE / ISTOCK
The same mismatch can happen with hotels.
You might put most of your everyday spending on a Marriott credit card and have a large balance of Marriott Bonvoy points. That’s useful if hotel stays are a major part of your travel.
But what if what you really want to do is fly more, and you tend to stay with family once you arrive?
You’re earning plenty of rewards. They’re just not necessarily helping with the expense that’s keeping you from taking more trips.
That doesn’t make Frontier miles or Marriott points bad rewards. It means every reward currency has things it’s useful for and things it can’t do.
Think about the places you visit today and the places you’d like to visit. Which airlines can get you there? Which ones serve your home airport? Do you spend more on flights or hotels? Are there trips you keep putting off because one part of them is especially expensive?
You’re beginning to identify which rewards might fit your travel.
Having More Than One Option Can Help
You don’t need to collect points with every airline and hotel program.
Spreading a few thousand points across a dozen accounts can leave you with a lot of balances that aren’t large enough to book much of anything.
But being locked into one corner of the travel world has its own drawbacks.
ANYABERKUT / ISTOCK
If all of your rewards are hotel points, they can’t do much when airfare is keeping you home. If all of your miles sit with one airline, you’re relying on that airline to serve the places you want to go and offer flights that work when you need them.
This is one reason some credit card rewards are useful.
Instead of earning points that immediately belong to one airline or hotel company, certain cards earn rewards that stay within the bank’s own rewards program. Depending on the program, you may later be able to move those points to one of several participating airline or hotel loyalty programs.
Suppose you have 50,000 points with a credit card rewards program. Months later, you’re planning a trip and find a flight that can be booked for 20,000 miles through one of that program’s airline partners.
You may be able to move 20,000 of your credit card points into the airline’s loyalty program and then use the resulting miles to book the flight.
Until you do that, the points haven’t been committed to that particular airline.
You’ll often hear these called transferable points. You may also see the term flexible points, which simply means the rewards give you multiple potential ways to use them rather than tying you to one airline or hotel from the beginning.
That can be useful if your trips don’t all follow the same pattern. The airline that gets you to your parents might be completely different from the one that works for your summer vacation.
You don’t need transferable points to travel with rewards. They’re one tool that can give you more choices.
Once you’ve thought about the travel you want to take, see what you’re already working with.
You may have more rewards than you realize.
Check any airline loyalty programs you’ve joined in the past, even if you don’t fly often. Look at hotel accounts you’ve used. Then check the rewards section of the credit cards already in your wallet.
Make a simple list. It might look like this:
15,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles
55,000 Marriott Bonvoy points
40,000 points with a credit card rewards program
Don’t worry about assigning a dollar value to every balance. You’re trying to answer two simpler questions.
MSTUDIOIMAGES / ISTOCK
What do I have, and can any of it help with the travel I want to take?
If your goal is flying to see family, the airline miles may be immediately relevant. The Marriott points could be useful for another trip but may not help much if you stay with family when you visit. The credit card points could create additional options depending on the program.
And if you discover that you have almost nothing, that’s fine.
Starting with zero and knowing where you want to go can be more useful than starting with 100,000 points you don’t know what to do with.
PointsYeah’s My Wallet can also help you keep track of rewards in one place, including balances you’ve entered manually and supported accounts you connect.
You know the kinds of trips you want to take. You know which travel expenses you’d like points to help cover, and you’ve taken stock of the rewards you already have.
What’s missing?
Maybe you want to visit family three times a year and have learned that a certain type of airline mile could help with those flights. Perhaps you want to take a bigger trip next summer and would rather have rewards that give you several airline options. Or maybe you’ve spent years accumulating hotel points when airfare is the part of travel you’d really like help paying for.
Now you have a reason to decide what you want to earn next.
MARTIN DM / ISTOCK
That could mean earning miles on flights you’re already taking, clicking through a shopping portal before a purchase, joining a dining program, or watching for promotions.
It could also mean deciding that a credit card makes sense.
A welcome offer can provide a large number of rewards after you meet its requirements, and spending on the card can continue earning points afterward. But by this point in the process, you’re not choosing a card because 100,000 POINTS sounded impressive.
You’re asking whether those 100,000 points can help with your travel.
A credit card can be a useful earning tool. It isn’t the strategy by itself.
Then See What Your Points Can Do
Eventually, all of this needs to turn into a trip.
Airlines let you search their websites for flights that can be booked with miles, just as you’d search for a ticket you were buying with cash. Hotels let you search for rooms that can be booked with points.
These are called award searches.
You could go to each airline or hotel website individually. The challenge is that one trip can sometimes be booked through several loyalty programs, each with its own points price and rules.
This is where PointsYeah can make the process easier.
With a PointsYeah flight search, you enter where you’re leaving from, where you want to go, and when you’d like to travel. PointsYeah searches the supported airline loyalty programs and shows you available options that can be booked with points or miles.
Think of it as the points version of searching for a flight with cash.
If you wanted to fly from Raleigh-Durham (RDU) to New York, for example, you’d enter Raleigh-Durham as your starting point, New York as your destination, and your travel date. The results show which supported loyalty programs have options and how many points or miles they require.
You don’t need to understand every program that appears on the screen. Start by seeing what’s possible.
If you don’t know where you want to go yet, Daydream Explorer starts from a different question. Tell it where you’re leaving from and explore destinations you could reach with points. That’s useful when the goal is something broad like “We want to go somewhere warm in February” rather than “We need to be in Hawaii on June 12.”
Maybe the ticket costs $500 in cash, but you find an option for 20,000 miles plus $5.60 in taxes. If spending $500 is what’s making you hesitate to take the trip, those miles can be extremely useful.
On another weekend, the same route might cost $150 while the airline still wants 20,000 miles. You might decide to spend the $150 and keep the miles for the next expensive trip.
This is where points advice can get unnecessarily mathematical.
You’ll see websites assign monetary values to different kinds of points and calculate whether a redemption produces a certain number of cents per point. That can be useful for comparing options, but it doesn’t need to dictate whether a redemption makes sense for you.
If using points means you can make a trip you otherwise wouldn’t take, that matters. If cash is cheap and you’d rather save the points, that matters too.
Look at what you’d otherwise pay, what the award costs, what you have available, and which resource you’d rather spend.
DRAZEN ZIGIC / ISTOCK
And don’t assume points need to cover the entire trip.
Maybe you have enough miles for two of the four tickets your family needs. Perhaps you pay cash for a cheap flight out and use miles when the return is expensive. You could buy the airfare and use hotel points once you arrive.
Sometimes points will save you hundreds or thousands of dollars. Sometimes paying cash will make more sense.
Both can be part of the same strategy.
Your Points Strategy Is Yours
The deeper you get into points and miles, the more opinions you’ll encounter.
Someone will tell you which credit card you need. Someone else will tell you which airline program has the “best” redemptions. You’ll see people flying business class around the world and others squeezing every possible mile out of shopping portals, promotions, and credit card spending.
There’s plenty to learn from all of them.
But they don’t necessarily want to take the same trips you do.
If your goal is to fly to see your kids more often, build around that. If you want to take your family to Europe, start there. If you’d like to take more weekend trips but don’t particularly care where you go, that’s something you can build around too.
Figure out which rewards can help with the travel you want to take. See what you already have. Then decide how you want to earn what’s missing, whether that’s through flying, shopping, credit cards, or some combination over time.
The goal isn’t to become an expert at points. It’s to make points useful for the way you want to travel.
If you’re booking a long-haul flight, there’s a growing chance you’ll see an aircraft you may not associate with flying across an ocean: the Airbus A321XLR.
American Airlines is already flying the aircraft, while Iberia and Aer Lingus are among the airlines using it across the Atlantic. United Airlines and Air Canada have also taken delivery of their first XLRs, and plenty of other airlines are already operating the aircraft or planning to add it to their fleets.
At a high level, the A321XLR takes an aircraft that looks a lot like one you might fly from New York to Florida and gives it the ability to fly much farther. Airbus says the XLR can fly for up to 11 hours. It uses routes such as Orlando to Paris and Dallas to Lisbon as examples of what’s possible.
That puts a single-aisle aircraft on some of the same long-haul routes traditionally associated with much larger planes. The experience isn’t necessarily better or worse, but it is different.
What Is the Airbus A321XLR?
The A321XLR is the longest-range version of Airbus’ popular A321neo family. XLR stands for Extra Long Range.
The easiest way to understand it is to think of the XLR as a smaller aircraft capable of doing some of what airlines traditionally needed a widebody to do.
ANTONIO PIRRO / ISTOCK
It still has one aisle, and economy is generally arranged with three seats on either side. But airlines can also install premium economy and lie-flat business-class seats, along with the entertainment, Wi-Fi, and other features travelers have come to expect on long-haul flights.
But in many ways, it’s a squeezed-down version of the widebody experience.
And long flights aren’t the only place you’ll find one. American, for example, also uses its A321XLR on transcontinental routes from New York (JFK) and Boston (BOS) to California, giving the airline more ways to put the highly efficient aircraft to work.
Long-Haul Flights on an A321 Aren’t Entirely New
The A321XLR isn’t the first version of the A321 to cross the Atlantic.
JetBlue, Aer Lingus, TAP Air Portugal, and other airlines have been flying the A321LR, or Long Range, across the Atlantic for years. If you’ve flown JetBlue from the East Coast to Europe, for example, there’s a chance you’ve already spent a long flight aboard a single-aisle A321.
The XLR pushes that idea farther. Its additional range comes in part from an extra fuel tank, giving airlines more flexibility to connect cities that might be difficult to serve with an A321LR and don’t necessarily need a larger aircraft.
So while the XLR is getting plenty of attention, long-haul flying on an A321 isn’t particularly new.
What Is It Like to Spend Several Hours on an A321XLR?
This is probably the question that matters more than how Airbus managed to make the aircraft fly farther.
In economy, the cabin will look fairly familiar. Most airlines use a 3-3 configuration, with three seats on each side of a single aisle. What changes is how long you’re sitting in it.
There’s less room to move around than on a larger two-aisle aircraft. Passengers heading to the lavatory, flight attendants working the cabin, and anyone trying to stretch their legs are all sharing the same aisle.
Up front, airlines have found creative ways to fit a long-haul premium experience into the narrower cabin. Depending on the carrier, you might find lie-flat seats in a 1-1 layout or staggered configurations that create especially spacious “throne” seats in certain rows.
The result can feel like a condensed version of flying on a widebody such as a Boeing 777 or 787 or an Airbus A330 or A350. An XLR can still have multiple cabins, lie-flat seats, premium economy, seatback entertainment, and Wi-Fi, but everything has to fit within the narrower fuselage.
The experience can also vary quite a bit between airlines.
United is putting just 150 seats on its XLRs, while American has 155. Both include 20 lie-flat business-class seats and 12 dedicated premium economy seats. Iberia and Aer Lingus fit more than 180 seats on theirs.
That’s a wide range for the same aircraft.
Why Are Airlines Flying Smaller Aircraft Across the Atlantic?
This is where the XLR gets more interesting for travelers.
Not every city pair can support a Boeing 787 or Airbus A350 full of passengers every day. An A321XLR gives airlines a way to serve long-distance markets with fewer seats, which can make new nonstop routes possible or support existing routes where demand doesn’t justify a larger aircraft.
We’re already seeing that play out.
American’s latest international expansion leans heavily on the A321XLR, including new service to destinations such as Vienna and Porto. United is also using the aircraft to expand its international network. It added several new XLR routes that take advantage of both the jet’s range and smaller size.
How to Know What You’re Booking
Airlines don’t always make aircraft types particularly easy to decipher.
Some will spell out Airbus A321XLR during the booking process, while others use equipment codes. American, for example, displays its aircraft as 32Q-Airbus A321XLR.
AA.COM
PointsYeah shows the scheduled aircraft when you open the details for a flight, although closely related A321 versions may sometimes be grouped together.
You might see Airbus A321neo/LR/XLR, for example, rather than a definitive XLR designation.
POINTSYEAH
You can also pull up the seat map in PointsYeah. That can be more useful than the aircraft name alone, especially if you want to see the cabin layout or where your preferred seats are located.
If the seat you want isn’t available, you can also set a Seat Alert and PointsYeah will let you know if it opens up.
{{ search-widget mode=”flight” }}
If the exact version matters, check the operating airline’s website as well. Aircraft assignments can also change before departure, so the plane scheduled when you book isn’t guaranteed to be the one waiting at the gate.
Ultimately, the A321XLR isn’t something travelers need to seek out or avoid. But it is worth knowing what those letters mean when they appear on an itinerary.
You could be crossing an ocean on an aircraft that feels noticeably smaller than the widebodies traditionally used for the trip. But at the same time, the XLR’s smaller size and long range are giving airlines more opportunities to fly routes they might not otherwise operate.
If you want to know where people traveled this summer, those numbers aren’t particularly hard to find.
Airlines know how many passengers they carried. Hotels know how many rooms they filled. Tourism boards spend plenty of time counting visitors.
All of those numbers tell us where people went. Award searches tell us something different. They show where people were thinking about going next.
PointsYeah analyzed millions of award searches made between June 1 and August 15, 2026, to see which international routes travelers searched most often. Not every search turns into a trip, of course. But in the aggregate, they offer a fascinating snapshot of what travelers had on their minds this summer.
And routes to one part of the world appeared far more often than anywhere else.
Where Travelers Were Searching Abroad This Summer
Here are the 20 international routes that appeared most often in award searches made through PointsYeah this summer.
One thing to keep in mind is that each direction is counted separately. Someone searching Seoul (ICN) to Los Angeles (LAX), for example, may be looking for the return flight of a trip that started in Los Angeles.
Ranking
Route
1
Los Angeles (LAX) → Tokyo (TYO)
2
New York City (NYC) → Tel Aviv (TLV)
3
San Francisco (SFO) → Tokyo (TYO)
4
New York City (NYC) → Tokyo (TYO)
5
Seattle (SEA) → Tokyo (TYO)
6
San Francisco (SFO) → Taipei (TPE)
7
Los Angeles (LAX) → Taipei (TPE)
8
Chicago (ORD) → Tokyo (TYO)
9
London (LON) → New York City (NYC)
10
Seoul (ICN) → Los Angeles (LAX)
11
Athens (ATH) → New York City (NYC)
12
Hong Kong (HKG) → San Francisco (SFO)
13
Hong Kong (HKG) → Los Angeles (LAX)
14
Seattle (SEA) → Taipei (TPE)
15
New York City (NYC) → Taipei (TPE)
16
Seoul (ICN) → San Francisco (SFO)
17
Seoul (ICN) → Seattle (SEA)
18
Hong Kong (HKG) → New York City (NYC)
19
Delhi (DEL) → San Francisco (SFO)
20
Paris (CDG) → Los Angeles (LAX)
It doesn’t take much studying to spot the pattern.
Tokyo Is Extremely Popular
Tokyo appears five times in the top 20 most-searched international routes, more than any other destination.
The searches came from across the U.S.: Los Angeles (LAX), San Francisco (SFO), New York City (NYC), Seattle (SEA), and Chicago (ORD).
Different starting points, same destination.
Japan’s popularity isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. International visitors have returned in enormous numbers in recent years. For Americans, increased airline capacity across the Pacific has also made the country easier to reach from more cities.
Then there are the reasons that don’t fit neatly into an airline schedule. The favorable exchange rate. The food. The rail network. The mix of enormous cities, smaller towns, culture, and nature that makes it relatively easy to build several very different trips around one country.
For some, Japan has also become less of a once-in-a-lifetime destination and more of a place worth returning to.
And the search patterns suggest plenty are still trying to get there.
SEANPAVONEPHOTO / ISTOCK
Japan Was Only Part of the Story
Fourteen of the 20 most-searched international routes connected North America with destinations in Asia.
Taipei appears four times. Seoul and Hong Kong each appear three times. Delhi makes the list as well. Just beyond the top 20 were searches involving Bangkok, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, and other destinations throughout the region.
That’s a much bigger story than Japan alone.
There isn’t one clear-cut type of trip tying those places together, either. Some are enormous business and aviation hubs. Some draw travelers for food and history. Others have become popular jumping-off points for exploring elsewhere in the region.
What stands out is how often the same Asian destinations appear from different North American cities.
SEANPAVONEPHOTO / ISTOCK
Europe Is More Complicated
Only three European cities appear among the top 20 routes, with London, Athens, and Paris making the list. But that doesn’t necessarily mean travelers were less interested in Europe.
North America has far more nonstop routes to Europe than it does across the Pacific. That spreads searches for Europe across more city pairs, while searches for Asia are more likely to pile up on a smaller number of major routes.
So the regional comparison isn’t quite as simple as the top 20 makes it look. What is clear is that individual routes to Asia, particularly Japan, repeatedly rose to the top.
Then there’s the route sitting at No. 2.
New York City (NYC) to Tel Aviv (TLV) ranks behind only Los Angeles (LAX) to Tokyo, placing it ahead of every other route involving Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul, Hong Kong, or Europe.
It’s the most notable outlier in the top 20.
Searches Capture the Trip Before the Trip
Award searches aren’t bookings.
Someone can search Tokyo today, Paris tomorrow, and Bangkok the day after that. The award seats they find might disappear. Their dates might change. They may decide the trip is too expensive or get cold feet and go somewhere else.
But that uncertainty is also what makes the data interesting.
Passenger statistics capture travelers after they’ve made their decisions. Search data catches them earlier, while they’re still considering all the possibilities.
For this stretch of summer, individual routes to Asia dominated the top of the list, with Japan standing out most. The rankings don’t tell us that Asia was more popular than Europe overall, but they do show where searches were most concentrated.
Eventually, that’ll change.
Holiday travel will replace summer vacations. Ski destinations will start appearing more frequently. Before long, travelers will be searching for spring break and summer 2027. And we’ll soon get another look at where everyone wants to go next.
DOCTOREGG / ISTOCK
Where to Next?
If there’s one practical takeaway from the rankings, it’s that plenty of other travelers may be looking for the same trip you are.
Award availability can change quickly, particularly around busy travel periods. Searching earlier gives you more time to compare dates, airports, and programs before committing to a trip.
And if a destination on this list has you thinking about somewhere new, that’s probably reason enough to take a look.
American Airlines is adding seven international routes in 2027, and its Airbus A321XLR will be flying several of them.
Four of the routes announced Thursday will use the long-range narrowbody. That includes brand-new service to Vienna and Porto, along with new flights from New York (JFK) to Amsterdam and Nice.
The A321XLR has been flying for American for less than a year, starting with transcontinental flights before heading across the Atlantic to Edinburgh. Those early routes offered a small preview of what American had planned for the jet.
But its 2027 schedule is giving us a much better idea of what’s ahead.
American’s New International Routes for 2027
American’s expansion includes three destinations joining or returning to its network, plus several new routes to cities it already serves from other gateways.
Some were announced earlier this year, while others are new as of Thursday.
Route
Starts
Aircraft
Chicago (ORD) → Tokyo Narita (NRT)
March 19
Boeing 787-9
New York (JFK) → Amsterdam (AMS)
March 28
Airbus A321XLR
Philadelphia (PHL) → Porto (OPO)
March 28
Airbus A321XLR
New York (JFK) → Nice (NCE)
May 6
Airbus A321XLR
Philadelphia (PHL) → Vienna (VIE)
May 6
Airbus A321XLR
Charlotte (CLT) → Barcelona (BCN)
May 27
Boeing 777-200ER
Philadelphia (PHL) → Reykjavik (KEF)
May 27
Airbus A321neo
Vienna and Porto will be entirely new destinations for American. Reykjavik returns to the airline’s network for the first time since 2019.
Elsewhere, American is bringing back Charlotte to Barcelona and adding new service from New York to Amsterdam and Nice. The Chicago to Tokyo Narita route was previously announced in July but is still included in American’s seven-route expansion for 2027.
There are a few other schedule changes coming next year. American will add a fourth daily flight between New York and London Heathrow (LHR), while seasonal Charlotte to Paris (CDG) and Miami to Milan (MXP) service will extend into early January 2028.
Tickets were supposed to go on sale Monday, August 31, but went on sale a day early.
Four of the seven routes will be flown by an aircraft that carries just 155 passengers.
That’s considerably fewer seats than you’ll find on the Boeing 787s and 777s that do much of American’s long-haul flying. But the A321XLR can still cross the Atlantic. It’s outfitted with 20 Flagship Suite business class seats, 12 Premium Economy seats, and 123 seats in economy.
For American, that means having a smaller aircraft it can send on long international routes without giving up business class or Premium Economy.
The 2027 schedule shows how American can put that flexibility to work. The XLR can open new destinations like Vienna and Porto or add another U.S. gateway to cities already on the map, as American is doing with Amsterdam and Nice.
There are plenty more XLRs coming, too. American has dozens still on order. That could mean more niche European routes or flights to new destinations in South America.
For passengers, there is one very big tradeoff. More long-haul XLR routes also mean more opportunities to spend a transatlantic flight on a single-aisle aircraft.
Whether that matters probably depends on where you’re sitting.
SWISS has been spending heavily on the passenger experience, and some of that investment is now coming to its home airport.
The airline announced plans to open new Business and Senator Lounges at Zurich Airport (ZRH) in the first quarter of 2027. Combined, the new lounges will span around 28,000 square feet (2,600 square meters), giving SWISS a lounge footprint that’s about 20% larger than the three lounges it currently operates in Dock A.
SWISS said last year that it invests around CHF 1 billion annually in improving the travel experience. So far, that investment has been most visible in the air. Last year, the airline debuted its new SWISS Senses cabins on the Airbus A350. And more recently, it kicked off a lengthy retrofit process to bring the new onboard product to its Airbus A330s and Boeing 777s as well.
But while that’s happening, SWISS is continuing to focus on the ground in Zurich.
New SWISS Lounges Are Coming to Dock B
The new Business and Senator Lounges will take shape in Dock B, where they’ll occupy separate floors of a building on the southern side of the dock.
There’s a reason they’re moving. Zurich Airport is preparing to replace Dock A, and the new building at Dock B will temporarily house some of the infrastructure displaced during construction.
The five-story modular building will initially include lounges and bus gates, along with some Airside Centre logistics. Construction began in May 2025, and the opening is expected in early 2027.
RENDERING OF THE NEW SWISS BUSINESS LOUNGE AT ZURICH AIRPORT / SWISS
Inside, both lounges will feature more seating and dedicated areas for working and relaxing. Across the two spaces, SWISS plans to offer around 20 fully soundproofed workstations.
RENDERING OF THE NEW SWISS BUSINESS LOUNGE AT ZURICH AIRPORT / SWISS
Large windows should bring plenty of natural light into both lounges.
The Senator Lounge will get a few extras of its own. A bar along the windows will offer a 180-degree view of Runway 34, the apron, and the Alps. SWISS also plans to add a wine humidor and a dedicated maturation room for selected cheeses and cured meats.
It doesn’t get much more Swiss than that.
The Existing Dock A Lounges Will Close
Once the new spaces open in the first quarter of 2027, the current Business and Senator Lounges will close, along with the SWISS Alpine Lounge.
The Alpine Lounge offers a more casual take on the SWISS lounge experience, with chalet-inspired design and an open kitchen.
But the concept isn’t disappearing entirely.
SWISS confirmed to Points Insider that while the Alpine Lounge won’t continue as a standalone lounge, selected elements will carry over to the new lounges. The airline says the Alpine Lounge will also serve as inspiration for the new spaces.
The First and HON Circle Lounge will stick around a little longer. SWISS plans to keep it open in Dock A until 2028, when it will also move to Dock B. The airline hasn’t shared details about what that lounge will look like.
Meanwhile, Zurich Airport expects construction on the new Dock A to begin in 2027. It will be built just north of the existing dock, allowing the current facility to remain open until the new one is ready.
For passengers, the end result is what matters most. Starting next year, there will be more room to work, eat, or watch airplanes before a SWISS or partner flight from Zurich.
And apparently, somewhere for the cheese to mature, too.
JetBlue was a late arrival to the airport lounge scene.
While other major U.S. airlines spent years building out lounge networks, JetBlue focused primarily on the experience onboard. That changed in December 2025, when the airline opened its first BlueHouse lounge at New York (JFK).
Boston (BOS) followed in August 2026.
The network is still small, but BlueHouse gives eligible JetBlue travelers a dedicated place to eat, grab a drink, work, or relax before a flight.
Here’s where to find JetBlue’s BlueHouse lounges, who can get in, and what to know before visiting.
TYLER GLATT / POINTS INSIDER
Where Can You Find JetBlue BlueHouse Lounges?
JetBlue currently operates two BlueHouse lounges, located in its two largest markets.
Airport
Location
New York (JFK)
Terminal 5 near Gate 526
Boston (BOS)
Terminal C near Gate C23
A third location could eventually follow.
JetBlue has publicly said it’s exploring a BlueHouse lounge at Fort Lauderdale (FLL), one of its largest focus cities and an important gateway to the Caribbean and Latin America. For now, though, the airline hasn’t confirmed plans to build one.
Travelers departing on a confirmed Mint or Mint Flex fare.
Additional guests cost $39 each.
Don’t check any of those boxes? You’re not out of luck.
There are also several ways to purchase access. Eligible Mosaic members and JetBlue Plus and Business cardholders can purchase one-time passes for $59 or $79, depending on how they qualify.
Passes are subject to availability and may not be sold when the lounge is busy.
The most important restriction is that “Base” fares aren’t eligible for BlueHouse access, even if the traveler would otherwise qualify. That includes Main Base, EvenMore Base, and Mint Base fares.
What Can You Expect Inside a JetBlue Lounge?
BlueHouse doesn’t reinvent the airport lounge. It just feels more like JetBlue.
Rather than making both locations identical, JetBlue incorporates local artwork, design, food, and drinks into each lounge.
New York (JFK) is designed to feel a bit like a stylish New York apartment, with local touches that include coffee from Joe Coffee, cocktails developed with Please Don’t Tell, and beer from The Greats of Craft. Boston (BOS) takes the same hometown approach in a very different direction, with New England-inspired design, George Howell Coffee, and a full-service kitchen serving rotating menus.
JFK also offers hot food, although its current setup is more grab-and-go until the lounge gets a kitchen of its own.
Beyond that, the basics are familiar. Expect complimentary food and drinks, Wi-Fi, power outlets, and a mix of spaces for working or relaxing before a flight.
TYLER GLATT / POINTS INSIDER
A Few Things to Know Before You Go
A few rules are worth knowing before heading to BlueHouse:
Bring a government-issued photo ID and a same-day boarding pass for an eligible JetBlue-operated flight.
Access is generally limited to three hours before departure. Different rules apply when connecting between JetBlue-operated flights.
You’ll need access to the terminal where the lounge is located. JetBlue doesn’t issue gate passes solely for visiting BlueHouse.
Entry may be limited when a lounge reaches capacity.
Amenities vary between locations.
Because access policies can change, it’s worth confirming the latest rules with JetBlue before a trip if BlueHouse access is important to your plans.
We were supposed to get inside JetBlue’s new BlueHouse lounge at Boston Logan International Airport a little earlier Monday morning.
Instead, the doors stayed closed while a few last things were straightened, adjusted, and made picture-perfect. Reporters and photographers waited outside for the first look.
That seemed appropriate for an airport lounge years in the making and just three days away from greeting its first real passengers.
Once inside, everything was exactly where it belonged. The bar was clean, the food display was impressive, and the chairs sat exactly where someone had decided they should sit.
JetBlue employees and executives guided the group around the room, pointing out big and small details while cameras captured a version of BlueHouse Boston that probably won’t exist for very long after it opens Thursday.
That’s one of the stranger parts about previewing an airport lounge.
You can inspect the food, sit in the chairs, count the outlets, and document just about every square inch. What you can’t know is whether the kitchen keeps up when the lounge nears capacity, whether the quiet corners stay quiet, or whether anyone can find somewhere to sit on a busy afternoon.
Calling any of that a review would be a stretch. But a nearly empty lounge says plenty of other things.
For roughly the first 25 years of its existence, JetBlue didn’t have an airport lounge. In the last year, it’s opened two, and standing inside the second one makes it fairly obvious that the most interesting thing about it isn’t simply what JetBlue built in Boston.
It’s why an airline that went so long without lounges decided it could no longer live without them.
A BlueHouse That Doesn’t Look Like the Other BlueHouse
JetBlue’s two BlueHouse lounges don’t have a ton in common.
That’s by design.
Ciara Cordasco, manager of product design at JetBlue and someone who worked on designing both lounges, said the lone thread connecting the two is the color blue.
Stephanie Evans Greene, JetBlue’s senior vice president of marketing and brand, described Boston as a “love letter” to the city. JetBlue used the same language when it opened New York, but the idea gave designers plenty of freedom to decide what a love letter to Boston should actually look like.
Some of those interpretations are unmistakable.
The Dugout borrows from Fenway Park’s Green Monster, baseball dents and all. Tables elsewhere were meant to look like near-replicas of those at the Boston Public Library. Local sports teams contributed memorabilia and photography, and tucked among it all is a trading card featuring JetBlue President Marty St. George, an Easter egg Evans Greene pointed out to me after the formal tour.
Hanging that wasn’t St. George’s idea.
One of my favorite little details is right out front. There’s a peephole near the big blue door, and if you look through it, you’ll find Paul Revere riding an Embraer E190.
I asked Cordasco where that idea came from. At some point during the design process, she said, the question became, “What’s the wildest thing we could do?”
Apparently, this was it.
There’s a reason the Boston references are fairly easy to recognize. At JFK, JetBlue found that some of the artwork left passengers asking a pretty basic question about what, exactly, they were looking at. St. George said they made a point of avoiding that in Boston, and I also learned he had a big hand in deciding what deserved space on the walls.
The result feels cozy for a lounge without true windows. Wood and copper finishes run through much of the space, orange accents break up all the blue, and the seating is divided into enough nooks and smaller arrangements that the nearly 12,000-square-foot lounge doesn’t feel like one enormous room
But not every lesson the airline took from New York was about design.
When I asked Ed Pouthier, JetBlue’s vice president of loyalty and personalization, about the airline’s biggest takeaway from operating its first lounge, he didn’t hesitate. It was the food. Others agreed.
JFK doesn’t have a full kitchen yet, and customers haven’t exactly been shy about telling JetBlue what they think about that.
Boston does.
That gives the airline considerably more room to play with the menu. Food will rotate seasonally, lobster rolls are among the local staples, although only in the afternoon, and George Howell Coffee is available both from self-service machines and made to order.
Work on Boston began around the same time as New York, so this isn’t BlueHouse 2.0. This new lounge wasn’t designed after JetBlue had months to figure out everything it liked and didn’t like about JFK.
But by the time Boston opens at 5 a.m. Thursday, the airline has something it didn’t have when either project began.
It knows what happens when passengers start coming through the doors.
The Strange Business of Becoming More Premium
The more interesting change at JetBlue is bigger than what’s being served for lunch near Gate C23.
JetBlue built much of its reputation by making the ordinary flying experience less ordinary. Seatback televisions weren’t exclusively for passengers at the front of the airplane, and neither were snacks people wanted to eat. At its core, the basic proposition wasn’t that JetBlue could make premium travel more luxurious. It was that sitting in economy didn’t have to feel quite so much like sitting in economy.
Airport lounges work a little differently.
By design, not everyone gets through the door. BlueHouse is still primarily a perk for some of JetBlue’s highest-value customers, although the airline is widening the ways other passengers can pay to get inside.
The lounges aren’t happening in isolation, either.
Mint already gives JetBlue a premium cabin on transcontinental and transatlantic routes, along with other markets where the airline has to put its best foot forward. JetBlue now has two BlueHouse lounges and a premium credit card that Pouthier told me continues to outperform expectations. Later this year, the airline also plans to begin rolling out BlueFirst and bring domestic first class to aircraft that have historically offered only variations of economy.
JetBlue could have gone in another direction and spent this chapter doubling down on the economy experience that made the airline unusual in the first place.
Instead, it’s building considerably more above it.
Pouthier put the direction far more plainly than I would’ve expected Monday. JetBlue, he said, is “on the cusp of becoming a premium airline.”
American, Delta, and United have had decades longer to build the premium ecosystems JetBlue is now trying to create. That’s something Pouthier acknowledged. But he sees an opportunity for JetBlue to approach premium differently, including through what he described as “affordable luxury.”
JetBlue also has some interest in doing premium differently. BlueHouse has its quirks, and Pouthier hinted that BlueFirst will come with some JetBlue-like “twists” of its own.
That’s a pretty remarkable change of pace for an airline that didn’t have a lounge or premium credit card at all until last year.
St. George didn’t pretend getting BlueHouse from an idea to an actual lounge had been easy. He described the process as painful at times, but said the result was more than worth it.
JetBlue’s own JetForward plan (the broader strategy it has been using to reshape the airline) makes the connection fairly explicit. Lounges sit alongside domestic first class and the premium card among the product and perk enhancements JetBlue says are intended to improve customer retention and acquisition.
BlueHouse isn’t simply another amenity JetBlue decided it needed to check off a list. It’s one piece of the airline JetBlue is trying to become.
I’ve been fortunate enough to see a lot of airport lounges, both at media previews like this one and the decidedly less pristine way most people experience them as passengers. A fancy bar, expensive coffee, handcrafted cocktails, comfortable furniture, and a few references to the city outside increasingly feel like the price of admission in a newly built or remodeled lounge.
JetBlue has all of those things in Boston, which is why some of the details that serve absolutely no practical purpose are more interesting to me.
Nobody needed to put Paul Revere on an E190.
It doesn’t make the lounge more functional, and nobody is going to book a JetBlue flight because they can peer through a hole in the wall and see it. Someone internally simply asked what the wildest thing they could do was and got permission to do it.
That’s pretty cool.
But when I asked Evans Greene what she thought made the lounge particularly JetBlue in ways travelers might overlook, she credited something that isn’t part of the design at all.
The people working in it.
Evans Greene said JetBlue has been particularly deliberate about selecting the crew members who work in BlueHouse because the interactions travelers have once they’re inside can be among the most memorable parts of the experience. The bar, furniture, and artwork create a sense of place, but the people ultimately have a lot to do with whether it feels like the airline whose branding is on the door.
That’s harder to photograph than a lounge-sized replica of the Green Monster.
When the Lounge Stops Looking Like This
For now, BlueHouse Boston is still pristine. JetBlue spent roughly a year and a half transforming what had been an airport food court into a lounge capable of holding 200 people.
On Thursday, it gets turned over to the passengers.
They’ll move the chairs, probably spill a coffee or two, and quickly figure out which seats everyone wants and which ones they don’t. The kitchen will get tested in a way a room full of media members never could. Some people will notice the tiny Dunkin’ figurine tucked away inside and some won’t. Someone will almost certainly read the message hidden in the mail slot on the front door and head straight for the candy closet.
Pouthier has told me on more than one occasion that there’s one thing he particularly doesn’t want to see at a JetBlue lounge, and that’s a line. Modern air travel already gives travelers enough reasons to be stressed, and his view is that getting into a lounge, and the experience once you’re inside, shouldn’t become another one.
Whether BlueHouse can deliver on that is something Monday morning couldn’t explain. That starts Thursday, when the cameras are gone and JetBlue no longer gets to call the shots on where every chair or coffee cup belongs.
The interesting part isn’t whether JetBlue can build a nice lounge. Boston is proof that JFK wasn’t a fluke.
Now JetBlue gets to find out whether it can become a more premium airline without losing the things that made it JetBlue in the first place.
