KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As Kansas City International Airport courts nonstop service to London's Heathrow Airport, airline industry trends and the opening of a new single-terminal airport next year may have the city poised to land more flights to international markets.
“I think that we're going to move away from the jumbo aircraft,” Scott Tarry, director of the Aviation Institute at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said. “The super jumbo (planes), those are being retired. They're not going to be replaced, the 747s and those large what we call twin-aisle-and-body aircraft. The trend is to smaller — not small, but smaller — longer-range aircraft.”
If airlines do indeed shift away from jumbo jets, it will open up new markets to nonstop travel, which could make Kansas City, which hosts the 2023 NFL Draft and the 2026 FIFA World Cup, an increasingly attractive destination for international carriers.
The larger planes will still be needed to service the most heavily traveled routes — including hubs like Atlanta, Minneapolis or Dallas-Fort Worth — but an increased reliance on sleeker, long-range aircraft could open up Kansas City to new routes as airlines seek greater flexibility.
“You're not going to need to bring as many people together to fill the flight,” Tarry said. “So for a city like Kansas City, who has an international presence in a global economy. Why not? You'll have aircrafts that don't need to bring 400 or 500 people together to justify the flight to different points in Europe or different points in Asia or Latin America.”
The airline industry was among the hardest hit during the COVID-19 pandemic as travel restrictions crushed demand for flights.
Justin Meyer, the deputy director of the Kansas City, Missouri, Aviation Department, called the pandemic the “most significant” disruption in the history of the air-travel industry.
Combined with a pilot shortage, it’s made it increasingly difficult for smaller regional airports to stay financially solvent, but that could increase KCI’s catchment area and make it a more desirable destination for airlines.
“One of the trends that has been evident over the last six months or more has been how difficult it is for small communities to hold on to air service,” Meyer said. “If you look across our region at some of the airports that have been most dramatically hit, they are the Columbias and the Joplins. Those are the airports that are really struggling. That potentially is something that is a point of strength for us, because we’re an airport that serves a four-state region (Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska) very effectively.”
Demand for leisure travel surged back this summer and, while demand for business travel lags in a new era of Zoom meetings, there are signs that it’s making a comeback, too.
“We expect we’ll finish the year probably at about 80 to 85% of pre-pandemic levels,” Meyer said.
It may take until 2024 before the industry completely recovers, especially with pilot staffing and other limiting factors apart from customer demand, but having a modernized Kansas City International Airport won’t hurt the city’s chances to capitalize on emerging air-travel trends.
“(Kansas City) has to do what it needs to do to create the best airport it can, the best facility it can,” Tarry said. “It can't control the things that are important to it in context. Those events, those trends, those other things that are going on, I think as an airport manager or an airport owner, you want to position your airport to be there to take advantage of those opportunities.”
While packing jumbo jets with more passengers is more profitable during boom times, the smaller long-range aircraft are cheaper to operate and insulate airlines better from economic turbulence or possible future health and safety issues.
Tarry stopped short of predicting a bonanza of new routes and international destinations, but he agreed that the new terminal could entice some airlines to beef up their presence at the new KCI, which is scheduled to open in March 2023.
Some domestic carriers, including Spirit and Frontier, still prefer to fly large aircraft to Kansas City, but constraints at the current KCI terminals make that a challenge.
“We have big planes arriving in our facility today and, when those planes are on the ground, it is a lot of congestion and a lot of difficulty as the security checkpoints start to choke up and the gate areas,” Meyer said. “There’s not enough space. We’ll eliminate a lot of those issues in the new facility.”
The new airport terminal should solve that problem. Airlines that have relied on smaller planes coming into KCI, because the customer experience with passenger congestion and the lack of amenities wasn’t ideal, may increase passenger traffic through the new KCI.
“As for the new terminal, some of the amenities that we’ll offer do provide airlines a lot more opportunity to grow and flex a little bit,” Meyer said. “Several of our airline tenants that may have five gates in the existing facility are taking additional gates in the new terminal, so there are positive indicators for growth as we prepare to open the new facility next year.”
The new airport may not be the primary reason for more international flights, but it won’t hurt Kansas City’s chances.
“It's about the airline business model and it's about the aircraft that are emerging into the market,” Tarry said. “What we've seen now is more distributed services. So, an air community like Kansas City with a new airport, I think it'd be well situated for that sort of opportunity. The city will be well positioned to take advantage of these opportunities and the airport will be part of that.”
