Millions of Americans are daily forced to endure crowded facilities, spend more money than they want to and suffer invasions of their privacy thanks to the 1 percent. But it’s not the 1 percent politicians usually talk about.
This 1 percent refers to 29 “large hub” airports in places like Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago that each account for 1 percent or more of the annual commercial air traffic in America. These giants routinely offer air travelers the most flights to more locations at the best rates on the biggest aircraft.
But their success comes at the expense of 109 airports in what the Federal Aviation Administration classifies as medium- and small-hub cities. These places are being starved of convenient, reasonably priced flights and the customers they attract. Since 2007, according to FAA data, airports in these cities have lost 22.2 percent of their flight departures.
It’s not just the airports that suffer when the number of passengers declines. Most of the airports are municipally owned and were built at public expense in the 1980s when air travel was expanding. As a result, officials often viewed them as magnets for economic growth.
It’s a different story today as officials struggle to compete against the large hubs. As an example, Daniel Gallagher, interim aviation director for the Colorado Springs Airport, describes the challenges of having to compete with Denver International Airport, an hour north.
“What really kicks our tail is our proximity to Denver and its three hubbing airlines,” he said. “We are competing with airlines at Denver that are not even making a profit on routes because they are trying to kill the competition.”
As the country’s fifth-busiest airport, Denver offers a wider selection of non-stop flights to more sought-after destinations. Gallagher estimates that a million customers go to Denver even though his facility is closer to their homes.
“We can’t sit back,” he said. The airport has slashed its workforce, refinanced its bonds to take advantage of lower interest rates, and is lowering rents, terminal leases and landing fees.
“We’re going to go from $69 per square foot inside the terminal to probably $51 a square foot in the terminal,” Gallagher said. It’s all in hopes of luring airlines to bring back flights lost to Denver.
Things are much the same at Oklahoma City’s Will Rogers World Airport, where Break-Away Travel co-owner Kathy Dorough remembers a much busier time.
“Back in the dark ages, we used to have Braniff and Continental, American, Delta, Northwest, Eastern, PanAm, TWA, but they’ve all gone by the wayside,” Dorough said. “Now, we basically just have American, United, Delta and Southwest.”
Karen Carney, Will Rogers’ marketing manager, says her facility recently gained a Cleveland flight and is one of the few similarly-sized airports to add new flights in recent years. But the overall trend is not encouraging.
“The airlines are … all about making sure that their routes are profitable. If a route is not profitable, or a route just isn’t making it, then they aren’t just going to keep it,” Carney said.
Places like Colorado Springs and Oklahoma City typically compete for new and relocating businesses by offering lower costs of living and a more desirable quality of life.
Having a bustling airport also boosts a city’s economic growth prospects, but credible data on the point is scarce.
George Mason University economist Ken Button told the Washington Examiner that having a hub airport adds on average about 12,000 high-tech jobs to a regional economy.
Button also noted that hubs offer business travelers — who are especially important to local and regional economic development efforts — numerous crucial advantages.
Those include “air travel time, time spent in terminals, time spent getting to and from airports, air fares, money costs of getting to and from airports, costs of overnight stays and costs of time wasted due to infrequent flights,” according to Button.
“As the old adage goes ‘time is money’ and time considerations are often far more important to business travelers than fares,” he said.
Such realities disturb civic and business leaders in non-large hub cities who are spending a lot of time trying to prove their worth to the FAA.
More flights to their airports will attract more businesses to their cities. But if the skies remain unfriendly, they worry that large hubs will grow more prosperous while they face economic stagnation.
