After seven years of no flights, Royal Air Maroc is connecting the United States City of Los Angeles again with Africa. The flights are looking to start next June in time for the FIFA World Cup, per report by Simple Flying.
Air Maroc, according to the Simple Flying report, is also looking to add flights to Boston, but it is not clear when those would commence.
While EgyptAir is reportedly keen to return to Los Angeles, Royal Air Maroc will, for now at least, be the sole passenger carrier between the US West Coast and Africa since Ethiopian Airlines exited Los Angeles in 2019. Even some of Ethiopian’s remaining US routes have shockingly low loads.
Royal Air Maroc to Los Angeles
Per Simple Flying, the first flight will take place on June 7. A three-times-weekly operation will exist on the 274-seat Boeing 787-8, which is the carrier’s lowest-capacity widebody. It makes a lot more sense to use this equipment than its higher-capacity 787-9s. Ch-aviation shows it has five 787-8s, each with 18 fully flat business seats (2-2-2) and 256 economy seats (3-3-3; 31″ pitch).
Covering 5,205 nautical miles (9,640 km) each way and blocked at up to 12h 20m,, Los Angeles will be Royal Air Maroc’s new second-longest route. Casablanca-Beijing Daxing is longer by both measures.
| Days | Casablanca To Los Angeles; Local Times* | Los Angeles To Casablanca; Local Times** |
| Tuesdays, Fridays, Sundays | 4:00 am-8:20 am (12h 20m) | 10:20 am-5:25 am+1 (11h 15m) |
| * In mid-June. Shown in Simple Flying’s new time format | ** In mid-June. Shown in Simple Flying’s new time format |
Does this new route make sense?
There is no denying it. The local market is tiny. In the 12 months to September 2025, just 12,000 round-trip passengers flew between Casablanca and Los Angeles. Usually, long-haul routes have a strong foundation of point-to-point traffic, which tends to be higher-yielding than connecting passengers. That is then supplemented by transit traffic to grow revenue and seat load factors.
Royal Air Maroc’s primary focus will be on passengers connecting elsewhere via its Casablanca hub. However, Los Angeles’ African traffic is not high. With 64,000 passengers, Cairo is overwhelmingly the largest market, hence EgyptAir’s renewed interest in the route. Lagos is next (20,000), followed by Accra (9,000) and Marrakech (7,000). Traffic drops off markedly thereafter.
Its 4:00 am departure time from Morocco is highly unusual. It will be its sole North America-bound flight that leaves as early as that. Using Cirium Diio data to examine its schedule for next June shows Accra flights will arrive at 11:40 pm, Lagos at 11:50 pm, and Cairo at 12:20 am. Thus, there’s around a four-hour wait, which is not bad—except it’ll be the middle of the flight. (Only a tiny number of its flights from Southern Europe arrive around midnight.)
It will be different from Los Angeles. Flights arrive in Casablanca at 5:25 am, but then don’t leave for Accra, Cairo, and Lagos until 12 noon to about 1:40 pm. That’s a huge amount of waiting time, and lower fares may consequently be necessary. Given the carrier will be heavily focused on Cairo, in particular, it’ll be crossing its fingers that EgyptAir decides against returning to California.
What about its relationship with American?
Despite codesharing with American, few codeshare markets will be available via Los Angeles, at least not without backtracking. Given their relationship, it is perhaps surprising that Chicago O’Hare was not chosen instead. After all, it is a major oneworld hub, which would open up connections dramatically. In 2019, American announced flights from Philadelphia to Casablanca, but the pandemic meant they did not begin.
Chicago is also a marginally larger market than Los Angeles to North/Central/Western Africa, which is where Royal Air Maroc flies on the vast continent. O’Hare flights would also be less expensive to operate, while a round-trip service would be completed within 24 hours, which would help to increase aircraft utilization. It’ll be interesting to see if it ever adds service to Illinois.
