Kansas City very underserved with 3.5 million flying indirectly

Celebrating receiving Cake of the Week for Southwest’s launch of Kansas City – Austin are Kathleen Hefner, Kansas City Airport’s Marketing and Communications Manager; Joe McBride, Senior Manager – Marketing and Communications; and Justin Meyer, Deputy Director, Marketing.
Almost 3.5 million flew indirectly domestically from Kansas City in 2019, booking data from OAG Traffic Analyser reveals.
The airport had 50 non-stop domestic routes in that pre-coronavirus year, but in 2021 only 44 are served.
Albuquerque, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Phoenix Mesa, Raleigh Durham, and San Antonio have been lost. Cincinnati, for example, is business-heavy; it is no surprise it has been cut in the current climate.
Including these now-unserved routes, Kansas City has 31 markets with P2P demand of at least 17,000 – before stimulation. They had a combined 1.3 million and a median of 31,600.
Aside from these six, Sacramento, San Jose, and Orange County are large markets, with between 54,000 and 80,000 passengers pre-stimulation.
Most of these markets, except the especially short ones, are interesting and may suit certain carriers; Breeze or JetBlue with A220-300s, anyone?
Read more: Breeze sees 500+ unserved routes; we explore 66 possibilities from 4 underserved mid-sized US cities.
Unserved market summary
Kansas City to/from… | Estimated P2P round-trip traffic in 2019 |
---|---|
Indianapolis* | 114,436 |
Raleigh Durham* | 99,765 |
San Antonio* | 93,826 |
Sacramento | 79,681 |
Albuquerque* | 78,443 |
San Jose | 58,219 |
Cincinnati* | 55,805 |
Orange County | 54,136 |
Jacksonville | 51,204 |
Pittsburgh | 49,794 |
Cleveland | 48,450 |
Columbus | 44,859 |
Oklahoma City | 37,069 |
Tucson | 35,059 |
Charleston | 32,284 |
Hartford | 31,634 |
Boise | 29,492 |
Norfolk | 29,471 |
West Palm Beach | 28,745 |
Memphis | 27,842 |
Spokane | 26,274 |
Reno | 25,142 |
Ontario | 24,872 |
El Paso | 23,368 |
Louisville | 22,657 |
Savannah | 21,368 |
Buffalo | 19,953 |
Greensboro | 19,879 |
Providence | 18,746 |
Grand Rapids | 18,610 |
Palm Springs | 17,001 |
* All served in 2019 with the figures here reflecting this but now unserved. Data based only on the continental US. Source: booking data obtained via OAG Traffic Analyser. |
Kansas City’s largest unserved markets by fare-distance
As a European, these one-way base fares – excluding any fuel charges, ancillaries, and taxes – are all high or reasonably so.
This includes the five routes that were cut – highlighted in red – despite having below-trend fares.
Markets with above-average pre-stimulated traffic and above-trend, on-trend, or very near fare-distance are Sacramento, Orange County, Jacksonville, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Oklahoma City, Tucson, Charleston, and Hartford. Most are obviously not very leisure-orientated.
Of these, only a handful – Columbus, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, and Charleston – are in the rough LCC sweet spot in terms of distance and therefore flight time.
However, none of the analysed markets are particularly long given Kansas City’s middle-of-the-country position.
And despite below-trend fare-distance, the five cut markets – all with good traffic – remain intriguing. And they’re all in or close to the sweet spot.

Domestic markets only and only markets within the continental US. Source: booking data obtained via OAG Traffic Analyser.
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