American Airlines' growing trans-Pacific hub at Los Angeles will overtake Delta's Seattle hub

As a US hub for trans-Pacific services the uncontested winner is United Airlines, with its San Francisco gateway. The battle between American Airlines and Delta Air Lines is for second position.

Delta has built up a hub at Seattle, while American has been growing in Asia from Dallas, but Dallas is far from being geographically close to the Asia Pacific, so American is turning its focus to building a trans-Pacific hub at Los Angeles. American has announced services from Los Angeles to Auckland, Sydney and Tokyo Haneda in recent months, complementing existing services to Shanghai and Tokyo Narita.

Beijing could be American's next destination from Los Angeles, giving American more Asia Pacific destinations, and more flights and seats from Los Angeles than Delta has in Seattle. Delta's Seattle hub is focused on Asia (it serves Australia/New Zealand from Los Angeles) and Delta serves five Asian cities from Seattle, whereas American has only two, and possibly soon a third, Asian service from Los Angeles.

American has built up domestic and Latin American flights at Los Angeles to feed its trans-Pacific network, but for now, Dallas remains American's biggest trans-pacific hub.