Airlines add new routes as gate expansion soars
Recent and upcoming nonstop additions “good news for passengers”
On Valentine’s Day, United Airlines launched daily direct flights from Denver International Airport to a pair of new destinations: Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., and Syracuse, N.Y. In June, the carrier will begin offering direct flights to Portland, Maine, and Fort Myers, Fla., out of Denver on summer weekends.
If this news has you yawning, that’s because airlines announcing new direct routes out of DIA has become routine the last two years.
In 2018, airlines added 59 new routes — that means nonstop service to a destination — at DIA, airport officials say.
Including the routes United announced last week, officials say 35 routes will be added at DIA between Jan. 1 and June 30 of this year, putting the airport on pace for an even more announcement-heavy 2019.
It’s hard to pin down exactly which year the 24-year-old airport added its most new routes, spokeswoman Emily Williams said. With mergers and acquisitions such as United’s 2012 absorption of Continental Airlines, some years have skewed numbers where existing routes are counted twice because they were taken on by a new company, she said.
“I can’t say (2018) is the year that we added the most routes, but we’ve added a lot of routes,” Williams said. “It’s good news for passengers. More options.”
The rapid growth in routes comes with a backdrop of physical growth on DIA’s trio of cavernous concourses. Work is underway on an expansion project that will add 39 gates at the airport by 2021, and airlines are already jockeying for position when it comes to laying claim to that extra space.
Construction timelines are subject to change. DIA’s simultaneous main terminal renovation project is facing a potential 10month delay after a project partner discovered concrete on the building’s floor may be weaker than originally believed.
In October, United’s vice president for domestic network planning, Ankit Gupta, claimed that the airline had dibs on 11 of forthcoming new gates and was hopeful to absorb an even bigger share.
Williams pumped the brakes on that this week. The new gates will be a combination of “preferential” and “city” gates, she said. The preferential ones are controlled and scheduled by a specific airline which has a lease on them while the city gates are managed by the airport and assigned as needed based on daily schedules. It’s safe to assume United will take on a number of new gates once work is complete, but no leases have been signed yet, Williams said.
United is the largest carrier at DIA, and it’s clear that the airport — the fifth-busiest in the country, serving some 64 million
passengers in 2018 — is critical to its future.
“As United’s fastestgrowing hub, with a record of more than 500 daily departures this summer, we’re excited to bring more flights, more destinations and more connection opportunities to our Denver-area customers,” Steve Jaquith, vice president of the airlines Denver’s hub, said in a new release issued last week.
But United is behind Denver-based budget carrier Frontier Airlines when it comes to new routes since the beginning of 2018.
Of the 59 routes added at DIA last year, 34 belonged to Frontier, compared with United’s 12. This year, United has announced 19 new routes, and Frontier has eight. Southwest Airlines, which also operates a Denver hub, has added six new routes combined over the period.
Fresh off inking a new contract with its pilots and buying 134 new jets last year, Frontier is poised to triple in size over the next decade, something likely to factor into who gets what gates in the future. In announcing new routes to Boston; Billings, Mont.; Green Bay, Wis.; and Mobile, Ala.; last month, Frontier senior vice president Daniel Shurz highlighted that the airline now reaches 42 states nonstop from DIA. He projected more is on the way.
“We look forward to making it easier for more Coloradans to fly, and for people to fly more often,” Shurz said in a news release.