Allegiant Shows How Kansas City’s Airport Benefits from Low Costs

Recently, Kansas City International Airport (MCI) hailed the arrival of a new air service. The new airline, Allegiant, will operate flights from Kansas City to various destinations in Florida. More flight options are good for Kansas City, and it is likely that MCI’s low costs helped bring Allegiant, a low-cost airline, to the airport.

Allegiant’s business model  is to provide the cheapest possible flights for travelers going from Northern climates to warmer destinations in the South and on the West Coast. To maintain cost-competitiveness, the airline charges a low base price and then adds extra charges for various amenities passengers can decide to buy. This makes Allegiant typical of Ultra Low Cost Carriers.

But the attention to costs does not stop there. Allegiant often eschews larger airports for smaller, secondary airports in metropolitan areas. For instance, instead of flying out of Saint Louis International Airport, Allegiant flies out of Belleville, a little-used airport some miles distant. These secondary airports have lower costs than large hubs, and Allegiant can use that advantage to stay cheaper than the competition. Aside from its primary holiday destinations, Allegiant avoids the nation’s largest airports. As the map above shows, it even avoids busy medium-hub airports where possible.

How then did MCI, a busy, medium-hub airport, entice Allegiant? Part of the answer is likely low price: whereas most medium-hub airports cost an airline more than $10 per passenger, at MCI the cost is only $7.75 per passenger. Not only is that much cheaper than most airports of its size, it’s cheaper than most small- and non-hub airports, as the chart below shows:

The low price makes it more affordable for Allegiant to take a chance serving MCI. In fact, holiday destinations aside, MCI is the busiest airport that Allegiant serves.

The addition of Allegiant to MCI underscores the reality that at airports, like everywhere else, costs matter. While expensive improvement projects may excite local leadership or spruce up the city’s front door, higher costs make an airport less competitive in its main mission: providing airline service. Residents and city leaders should remember that as they plan terminal improvements at MCI.