American Airlines, which announced that its passengers have chosen Punta Cana, the Dominican Republic, as their favorite destination, also unveiled new routes to the ever-more-popular leisure destination in the Caribbean.
Pun Madness
On March 26, American Airlines announced that its customers picked Punta Cana International Airport (PUJ) as their favorite vacation spot, with the Dominican Republic city winning the contest that the airline dubbed as ‘March Map-ness,’ an ode to March Madness, the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Division I men’s basketball playoff tournament.
“Punta Cana, one of the top-visited destinations in the Dominican Republic, beat out Cancun, Mexico, and Montego Bay, Jamaica, in the Caribbean Pleasure category before advancing to a win over Miami, which sent it to the final match-up against San Francisco.
The airline’s customers voted in the contest on social media, which “tipped off” on March 3, with the carrier noting that it offers the most flights out of any US airline to Punta Cana.
Celebrating the end of the March Map-ness bracket, American Airlines is offering flights to Punta Cana from just 5,000 AAdvantage miles one-way.
Planning next winter’s Caribbean getaways
On the same day, American Airlines announced a handful of short-, medium-, and long-haul domestic and international routes, including new flights from four airports in the US to Punta Cana.
In the Caribbean, American Airlines announced that, starting November 8, it will begin flying from Oklahoma City Will Rogers International Airport (OKC) to Cancun International Airport (CUN) in Mexico, becoming the airport’s and the state’s first international route at least in the 21st century.
Further routes include flights from Indianapolis International Airport (IND), Nashville International Airport (BNA), Pittsburg International Airport (PIT), and Raleigh–Durham International Airport (RDU) to Punta Cana, with all five beginning on December 6.
The new routes will be operated on Saturdays only, with the airline utilizing its Boeing 737-800 aircraft to fly passengers to Cancun or Punta Cana.
As such, in December, American Airlines will offer 99 weekly flights to Punta Cana, with services to the Dominican Republic airport being offered from ten airports in the US, according to data from the aviation analytics company Cirium’s Diio Mi airline planning tool.
Long pause
Cirium’s Diio Mi also showed that the last time any US airline served Punta Cana with direct flights from either Raleigh-Durham or Nashville before 2025 was Frontier Airlines when, in 2019, the airline offered up to two weekly flights from the former airport to Punta Cana.
In February, Avelo Airlines began once-weekly flights from Raleigh-Durham to Punta Cana, which later increased to twice-weekly, with the route being a seasonal flight that will end in August.
In March, Southwest Airlines began offering Saturday-only departures from Nashville to Punta Cana, becoming the first airline in a decade to serve the route.
Sunwing Airlines, which will be merged into WestJet, was the last airline to do so in 2015 when the Canadian airline still offered flights from the US.
Meanwhile, Delta Air Lines was the last carrier to fly between Pittsburgh and Punta Cana, with a single Saturday flight being offered between June 2015 and August 2015 before the airline completely exited the route that it had served between January 2014 and August 2014 and then during the three summer months in 2015.
No airline has served direct flights between Indianapolis and Punta Cana since at least 2000. In May 2017 and June 2017, Delta Air Lines offered one-stop Indianapolis to Punta Cana connections via Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW).
