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’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.