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?

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.