TRAVEL AND TOURISM : American Airlines Drops 1 Round-Trip Flight to San Jose

American Airlines has shaken up its flight schedule at John Wayne Airport, even without the entry of Reno Air to take over some of its unprofitable routes.

American dropped one of its round-trip flights to San Jose Thursday, leaving the carrier with five on the daily schedule. That was the same route that Reno Air had planned to assume this week before a tiff developed between the airport and federal regulators about the arrangement.

Because it planned to give up the route, American reassigned its San Jose planes to other routes around the country. As a result, there will be only three flights on the Orange County-San Jose route in July, but that number increases to five in August, a spokesman said.

Meanwhile, American has been adding flights into its national long-haul hubs--the airports where it feeds passengers to make connecting flights. It added another flight to Dallas on Thursday, for a total of seven. Starting Aug. 1, American plans to add two additional daily flights to Chicago for a total of seven.

American spokesman John Hotard said that the company is trying to concentrate on longer flights because they are more profitable than the short hauls. Southwest Airlines began service at John Wayne last month, slashing existing fares by almost half to $69 one way to San Jose and Oakland, a trend that is expected to continue.