KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After years of discussion, planning and construction, the new single terminal at the Kansas City International Airport is set to open.
The new terminal will replace the current facility which dates back to 1972.
"When you look at this building, it’s over 50 years old, it just didn’t make sense to try and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to renovate it," said Steve Sisneros, vice president of airport affairs with Southwest Airlines.
Sisneros said Southwest Airlines has worked with Kansas City leaders on what the new terminal would look like.
“As part of the design effort, we tried to make it as customer friendly as we could," Sisneros said. "We have amazing concession and food options. Amazing artwork. When you walk into the facility, you see everything hanging from the ceiling, it really is a wonderful front door for the city and the community."
That community includes large corporations with employees that travel for business.
“There’s just not a lot of places here at KCI where you can sit down, pull out your laptop, hook up to Wi-Fi and charge it to be able to conduct that work in real time," said Kristina Hartman, a business traveler.
Dave Harvey, vice president of Southwest Business and chief sales officer, said the new terminal was created with business travelers in mind.
“This new terminal means productivity, reliability — a lot of the comforts that they need," Harvey said. "It’s just going to be a better experience and more efficient for our business travelers."
The airline executive added the new facility provides growth opportunities for service.
"You think of where Kansas City is geographically, the heart of middle America, heart of America, it’s a natural geographic point to start to actually carry some of that flow traffic in addition to our point to point non-stop service," Harvey said.
Harvey explained corporate customer levels are expected to return to March 2019 levels by March of this year.
The rebound comes after fluctuations during the pandemic as well as work from home policies from several businesses.
In addition to the pandemic, Southwest Airlines suffered a logistical meltdown that resulted in hundreds of cancelled flights in December.
In an effort to reassure business travelers, Harvey said the company has made several improvements to avoid a repeat.
"We are making some short term investments to make the operation more resilient as well as some technology investments as well to help with some of the solvers in the real-time when we’re trying to run an on time operation," Harvey said. "And we have a huge portfolio of things we’re investing for the future for the next Winter season as well.”
Hartman said she can't for the terminal to open.
“I’m really excited," Hartman said. "This is going to be an exceptional opportunity for all of Kansas City, especially for us business travelers."
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