American Airlines announces direct flight between MRY and DFW.

New direct flights between Monterey Regional Airport and Denver International Airport take off Thursday, Oct. 4. 

That's good news for MRY officials and the hospitality industry, both of which have been working to get more connections out of MRY. 

The better news, if tentative, is that American Airlines on Tuesday announced another new direct flight for MRY, this one to Dallas-Fort Worth, the airline's busiest hub. 

"What we get out of it is increased connectivity, and certainly increased capacity—more seats coming to the market means more visitors," MRY Executive Director Mike La Pier says. 

The 76-seat plan is expected to make the round-trip daily, departing at 9:15am from DFW, and departing at 11:15am from Monterey. 

The route is expected to launch April 2, and will operate through Nov. 3, the busiest tourist season, to start. La Pier says the airline is likely treating the six-month window as a pilot program.

"It is probably driven by one of two things: either aircraft availability or pilot availability," he says. "It is kind of a trial period, and we need to look at it that way."

The other new domestic flights American Airlines announced on Oct. 2 are all year-round: from DFW to Augusta, Georgia; Flagstaff and Yuma, Arizona; Burbank and Bakersfield, California; and Gainseville, Florida. 

Tickets for all of those new routes go on sale Oct. 8, according to American Airlines. New routes will take daily AA flights from 800 to nearly 900 daily. 

The MRY-DFW route is expected to open up 130 new routes from Monterey, AA spokesperson Nichelle Tait says.

Additional round trips or a seasonal extension could be added. "If the flight performs well, we'd either extend or increase the service," she says. "We base our network on supply and demand. Our frequencies fluctuate all the time based on aircraft availability."

“We want the best for customers and that means having an expansive network out of DFW,” Cedric Rockamore, vice president of DFW Hub Operations for American Airlines said in a statement. “These new routes are going to provide so many more unique travel opportunities, domestically and internationally, connecting customers from all over the world.”

For MRY, the mission remains to boost the number of travelers. La Pier cites some statistics to show the ongoing opportunity for growth: 

"The region generates about 1.4 million visitors per year; we capture about 400,000 of those," he says. "We've got a ways to grow to be able to meet our entire demand. It's unrealistic that we're going to do that."

Dallas will be the seventh airport with a direct connection to MRY, joining Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Diego.