SLC airport is attracting more flights, but it may not get you to Cleveland any cheaper

Visitors may not worry much about the cost of a flight when they flock to Salt Lake City for Utah’s famous powder. To many, that’s just the cost of taking a vacation.

But when those who live here want to head elsewhere, the hefty price tag of a flight can strain wallets and nerves.

Steep airfare isn’t uncommon for “fortress hubs” like the Salt Lake City International Airport, where one airline — Delta, in Utah’s case — is the dominant carrier, airport Executive Director Bill Wyatt said.

The Atlanta-based airline has a stronghold on the Utah market. According to airport data from last year, nearly 60% of passengers who flew through Salt Lake City International Airport took a Delta flight.

That kind of market share means Delta can drive the cost of flights — and it has. Compared to other airports in the West, Salt Lake City fares often ranked among the highest, even when looking at prices from lower-cost carriers, a Salt Lake Tribune analysis found.

Spendy flights to more places

So, how can the airport drive down the cost of a ticket? Wyatt said it all hinges on bringing more competition into the market, and there isn’t much airport officials can do to make that happen.

The Federal Aviation Administration bars airports from using money from one carrier to lure another airline to compete, and Delta has ponied up a lot of cash for Salt Lake City’s airport.

When it signed a long-term lease extension in late 2022, for example, Delta committed to giving the airport the money it needed to complete construction on concourse B. And airport officials understandably don’t want to tangle with Delta, a major employer in Utah and a key revenue source for the airport.

While the hub status of Utah’s capital may weigh heavily on pocketbooks, Wyatt said, it packs plenty of benefits, too. Because of the role it plays in Delta’s network, the airport offers many more direct flights than the average airport.

“We have many more nonstop destinations than just the local population of airline passengers would support,” Wyatt said. “That’s because a lot of the connecting passengers provide sufficient traffic to make a flight from Salt Lake to Twin Falls make sense, or Fargo, North Dakota, or take your pick.”

If not for those connecting passengers, Wyatt said, that level of service wouldn’t exist. Without its hub status, the executive director said, the airport would be able to support only 40 to 45 nonstop destinations, not the roughly 100 it offers now.

“People would be connecting for domestic travel,” he said, “a lot more than they’re having to do now.”

Raelene Davis, Ski Utah’s vice president of marketing and communications, said her tourism organization has an interest in ensuring Salt Lake City’s airfare stays competitive with other nearby skiing destinations, like Denver or Jackson Hole.

Davis said Ski Utah CEO Nathan Rafferty sits on the airport’s advisory board, which helps the group stay in communication with the airport and explain the needs of Utah’s ski industry — like a direct flight to London, which Ski Utah advocated for before its takeoff in Salt Lake City.

“We will never veer from that partnership with Delta,” Davis said. “But we do hope and wish that some of their fares would decrease, for sure. We appreciate the other airlines that come in that have cheaper fares, but when you have one airline that’s the hub ... it is hard to get them to change fares.”

Eye on international travel

While airport officials may be barred from using Delta’s money to attract competing service, they are able to recruit additional flights where little or none currently exists — and they’ve set their sights abroad.

Wyatt said he’s confident Delta will begin service from Utah’s capital to Incheon, South Korea. That kind of service, he said, could be more competitive than other routes.

“There really aren’t other Asian-connected carriers around Salt Lake that would make sense, because Delta is able to aggregate connecting passengers here,” Wyatt said. “Even though there wouldn’t be direct competition in the market, there is competition, because you could fly from Salt Lake to Los Angeles, to San Francisco, to Seattle, potentially, and get very competitive rates there to a variety of markets in Asia.”

Utahns may also be able to access other competitive international fares with additional service from Salt Lake City to Hawaii. This year, Hawaiian Airlines began service in Utah’s capital and will open up more competition in Pacific markets.

“They fly beyond Hawaii to places like Australia, New Zealand, to the South Pacific,” Wyatt said. “There’s a large Pacific Islander community here in Salt Lake that can take that Hawaiian flight to Honolulu and then connect to places throughout the South Pacific, where others who may wish [can] go to New Zealand or Australia for a pretty competitive fare.”

Demand may draw competition

The Salt Lake City airport is fertile ground for new takeoffs elsewhere, and that could lead to lower costs. Wyatt said the data shows the demand from the local population is there.

Salt Lake City International Airport’s passenger flow has about 60% of passengers arriving to or leaving Salt Lake City, Wyatt noted, with the other 40% being connecting passengers just passing through the airport en route to other destinations.

“Local passengers are, to the airlines, more valuable, and that’s because they cost less to fly,” he said. “Everybody in the industry knows that there has been strong growth in the [local] market here in Salt Lake. So they’re all trying to figure out what they can do to take advantage of that — and if it’s a carrier that isn’t here, it’s causing them to think about it. And that strong [local] growth is just a calling card for Salt Lake because it says the economy is hot, and it says there is an underserved market here.”

The ever-expanding airport’s new restaurants, shops and gates are even more of a selling point for new carriers, said Davis, the marketing executive for Ski Utah.

“The one thing you don’t want to do when someone’s going on vacation is give them a terrible experience when they arrive or when they depart,” she said. “And I believe our airport gives them the best service.”

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