In recent days, American Airlines has been flying an Airbus A321neo back and forth across the North Atlantic Ocean. While it is no secret that the US ‘big three’ legacy carrier and one world founding member has designs on doing so with the Airbus A321XLR, this particular aircraft is a regular, domestic-configured A321neo.
Edinburgh Airport’s Unexpected American Visitor
In recent times, airports in Scotland have seen no shortage of interesting American visitors. Indeed, July saw Glasgow Prestwick (PIK) welcome multiple USAF Boeing C-17 Globemaster III military transport aircraft. Meanwhile, last month, a modified Boeing 757-200 known as the C-32 flew from RAF Fairford to Prestwick bearing the ‘Air Force Two’ call sign while transporting US Vice President JD Vance on holiday.
However, more recently, the country has been handling an unlikely visitor on the commercial side of aviation. Indeed, as reported by One Mile At A Time, American Airlines is operating 20 round trips between Philadelphia and Edinburgh this month using a domestic Airbus A321neo registered as N471AN. Paulina Wykurz, who serves as an American Airlines Supervisor at Edinburgh Airport, explained on LinkedIn that:
“This is a special charter flight. The purpose of this flight is to allow the pilots to complete their certified training on the aircraft type. We’re lucky enough to host our second aircraft here in Edinburgh.”
The Flights Began Last Thursday
According to Flightradar24, N471AN made its first trip across the pond on August 4, taking off from Philadelphia at 21:26. This represented a 46-minute delay compared to its planned departure time of 20:40, but its arrival at Edinburgh Airport was bang on time, with the aircraft touching down at 08:30 the following morning.
These eastbound rotations are numbered as AA9805, while the westbound sectors, which are scheduled to leave Edinburgh at 09:30 and reach Philadelphia at 12:00, are numbered as AA9806. They don’t carry passengers or cargo, but, rather, as One Mile At A Time notes, are being used to train Check Airmen in order for them to be suitably qualified to certify other American Airlines pilots on these planes.
In the longer term, this is reportedly tied to American Airlines’ plans to open an Airbus A321XLR base at New York JFK Airport, where at least 40 pilots are expected to be stationed in order to operate transatlantic flights with the next-generation narrow body twin jet. As it happens, however, these are not American’s only flights that are operating between Philadelphia and Edinburgh at this moment in time.
American Airlines Normally Flies Boeing 787s To Edinburgh
Indeed, 2025 has also seen American Airlines operate scheduled non-stop flights on this route using widebody twinjet aircraft from the Boeing 787 Dreamliner family. As noted in the table below, the smaller 787-8 model is the more popular choice on this front, with these 234-seaters operating almost four times as many flights as the larger 787-9, which has the capacity to accommodate 285 passengers onboard.
As reported by Simple Flying earlier this year, these daily transatlantic passenger flights resumed in May, with the 787-8 accounting for the bulk of the capacity and the 787-9 providing extra seats in August and early September. This year marks the first time that Edinburgh Airport has offered over one million round-trip seats on flights across the North Atlantic Ocean to destinations in Canada and the US.
