KCPowercat wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 11:51 am
GRID wrote: ↑Tue May 23, 2023 7:53 pm
Speaking of United. My god. They are just going nuts in Denver and I can't believe how big Southwest has gotten there as well.
United will have 90 gates at DEN and are adding 35 new flights this year.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-release ... %20Airport.
I just don't get why KC can't get even a small portion of this type of attention now with the new terminal. But it really looks like that ship sort of sailed back about 10-15 years ago.
I still think that had the new terminal at MCI been built before DEN really took off, MCI would have become a major focus city for Southwest at the very least. I'm not sure the airlines have much interest in MCI for connecting traffic anymore. That might change over the next several years, but I don't see anything that indicates that might happen.
Wouldn't UA be expected to add flights, to their hub?
My point is how much DEN has snowballed since leaving Stapleton. They are so big now that adding flights is not really competition with other airlines, they just feed off each other. It's become a major world hub airport that is more about connecting flights than serving Denver residents. But Denver residents benefit from having so many flight options now.
Back when KC was dicking around with KCI and renovating the three terminals when they should have been building a new one, Southwest was not even serving Denver and barely had much going on in St Louis. Southwest wanted to make KCI a focus city but eventually gave up on KCI due to the terminals and customer not wanting to route through KCI. Now Denver is a major hub (I know they don't call them hubs) and StL has way more flights than KC I believe.
And UA has made Denver one of their biggest hubs when it didn't used to be. At the same time Southwest has nearly as many flights as UA there. Both of these airlines have more gates each than all of KCI's gates.
What I'm saying is that had KC not dragged their feet for so long on a new terminal, I honestly think KCI would be a major focus city for Southwest today and that would have also led to more flights from the legacy airlines. With so many flights in Denver and even St Louis now, it might be very difficult for KCI to recover from that lost time. It's possible though. It seems like KCI's new terminal would be perfect for Southwest to build up a major focus city, but we shall see.