Historic castle Castillo San Felipe del Morro sits on the coastline in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
This December, U.S. airlines will offer less capacity to Florida and more to Caribbean destinations, primarily Puerto Rico and Mexico, than they did in the same month a year earlier.
Also, in July 2025, airlines are betting big on Italy, boosting capacity by about 12%. Much of that increase is attributable to American Airlines, which recently announced it will boost service to Rome, Naples and Venice.
The data on seat allocation trends was presented Thursday on a press call by London-based aviation analytics firm Cirium.
It showed this December, Florida capacity on U.S. carriers will decline by 187,000 seats, while Puerto Rico and Mexico capacity will increase by 83,000 seats and 78,000 seats respectively. Capacity to Florida had been considered excessive.
However, JetBlue has aggressively added capacity at Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, with five new destinations in October. On the carrier’s earnings call in October, President Marty St. George said that Caribbean flying has always produced revenue per available seat mile that is above system average for the carrier. In particular, he said, “We’ve been pretty aggressive so far adding capacity into San Juan, and we’re very happy with what we’ve seen so far.”
Meanwhile, Florida cuts are being led by Spirit, Southwest and Frontier, which all show capacity percentage reductions in the high single digits for the month, Cirium said.
In September reports from Miami International Airport and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, domestic traffic gained 3% at MIA but fell 3.7% at FLL, according to airport statistics.
As for the transatlantic, the top seven European airports for U.S. passengers in July 2025, based on total seats, remain the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands and Ireland.
UK has 1.2 million seats, Germany 676,273 seats, France 624,506 seats, Italy 443,873 seats; Spain 349,479 seats, Netherlands 329,482 seats and Ireland 270,318 seats, according to Cirium.
UK showed a slight loss of 11,768 seats, but all the rest showed gains. Italy’s gain of 47,529 was the largest. American said recently that it will operate its largest schedule ever to Italy: It will add Chicago to Naples on May 6, Dallas to Venice on June 5, Miami to Rome on June 5 and a second Philadelphia to Rome on June 5.
American said that with the Chicago/Naples flight, it will offer more seat to Naples than any other airline. The carrier already serves Philadelphia/Venice.
Except for Italy and Ireland, all of the top seven transatlantic destinations have major European hubs that are served by joint ventures between the largest U.S. and European carriers.