I wasn’t planning on doing a Baltimore/Washington (BWI) post originally, but after doing DCA on Monday and Dulles on Tuesday, well, let’s just finish out Washington Week with the other airport serving the metro area. This is actually a very interesting airport with what I would consider to be the least fixed future of the three in the region.
Of all the DC-area airports, BWI has probably had the most tumultous history. It started life as Baltimore’s airport, but once the state took over in 1972, the plan became more regionally-focused. In 1973, the airport was renamed Baltimore/Washington International, and in 1980 the code officially changed to BWI.
In 1983, Piedmont officially made BWI one of its hubs, and that ended up sticking around once USAir bought the airline. The two combined in 1989, and they ran their hub out of the D gates. Here’s a map from around the time of the transition:
But this hub would not last long. T-100 traffic data starts in 1990, so you can see the downfall throughout the 1990s as another airline rose up.
Seats by Month for Select Airlines From BWI
Data via Cirium
The hub took a big hit during the Gulf War recession, but it was 1993 when Southwest decided to make BWI its first East Coast operation and then it was off to the races. On a personal note, I started as a freshman at George Washington University in 1995, and my dad had Company Club tickets to get me back and forth to Phoenix for breaks. Most of the time it required two stops, often Chicago and Omaha or St Louis and Tulsa or something wild like that. That’s how BWI started, but it grew very quickly in the late 1990s to 2001. After 9/11 the now-US Airways hub was officially dead, and Southwest just kept growing.
BWI became known as the low-cost airline airport since that was the one place Southwest served in the region for man years, but it went even lower cost when the ULCCs started to poke around.
BWI was always a hotspot for the random cats and dogs of the airline world that wanted to serve the area. Internationally, Ghana Airways and Air Senegal made the place home. Within North America, there were the likes of Pro Air, USA3000, and Pan Am III over the years. But the first true ULCC came in 2012 when Spirit moved its operation from DCA. Then Allegiant started flying there in 2016, Frontier in 2019, Sun Country in 2020, and Avelo in 2022.
Here’s a look at market share at the airport over time to show just where these changes happened.
BWI Seat Share By Month
Data via Cirium
The ULCCs have made a dent in Southwest’s share, but that seems to have largely stalled out. Spirit spent 2024 adding flights to the West Coast, but it cut back elsewhere. Overall, BWI saw Spirit seats increase in 2024 vs 2023, but the airline was more than a quarter below its peak 2019 levels. And in 2025, more than a half dozen markets that flew in 2024 aren’t scheduled to return.
Frontier is much smaller and has seen a similar trend with more destinations but only small seat gains. It is certainly much more focused on Philly where it has a crew base. Allegiant, meanwhile, has shrunk dramatically with seats in 2024 less than half what they were in 2022. Sun Country and Avelo are rounding errors and likely will remain that way at the airport.
So, what does the future hold? BWI will continue to be Southwest’s primary East Coast gateway, without question. The addition of redeyes has made BWI even more relevant for longer haul flying than it was before. And the MAX gives the airline more useful range. Southwest just signed its first interline agreement (this time around) with Icelandair, and that starts with feeding travelers through BWI. While I don’t imagine this is going to be huge, it will be the first of more to come.
But what happens beyond Southwest is a bigger question mark. Spirit is bankrupt, though it has a plan to emerge. Frontier has remade its network, but BWI doesn’t seem like it will be a major part of any plan. Again, that pesky focus on Philly may put BWI on the backburner. Avelo likes Wilmington, and Allegiant seems to have drifted elsewhere.
With the reduction in capacity at DCA, at least temporarily, BWI could benefit to some extent. But as is the case for airports like Midway and Hobby, as Southwest goes, so goes BWI.
14 comments on “BWI’s Future is Full of LUV, But What Else?”
BWI will not benefit much, if anything, from capacity reductions at DCA. BWI is a WN fortress, and not much else. The legacy carriers serve it, marginally, because of the catchment area around it, not because of Baltimore’s economy or business traffic demand. Long haul routes generally haven’t worked out of BWI to Europe. It will remain as is, a low-cost’ish airport and second fiddle to DCA and to IAD, which have far wealthier, more consistent traffic patterns and a very healthy mix of leisure and corporate traffic, which BWI does not.
Maryland’s moneyed areas are mostly centered in Montgomery County around Rockville & Harford County in & around Columbia. You’ll find other concentrations near Annapolis & the eastern shore, but not to the same degree.
I think you mean Howard County, not Harford County.
Born and raised in the area and it does have a bigger corporate / business base than many people realize (including the Baltimore metro). The Baltimore metro area (not including DC) is the 19th largest economy in the U.S., larger than Charlotte, Austin and Tampa. It’s also much more convenient to fly out of BWI if you live in the Columbia and Annapolis areas, and it gets southern PA and some DE traffic. And let’s not act like it’s all doom and gloom, it routinely has the highest yearly passenger count of any of the three airports in the wider metro area. I’d love to see Delta make it a focus city – I think it could work. I also think new leadership is needed – current Ex Dir has been there too long – new ideas are needed to take the airport to the next level. It should also be more like this region’s Newark than it is, relatively speaking.
They’ve been talking about a Maglev/highspeed train between Baltimore and DC forever. While I’m not holding my breath, BWI needs to cash in on this with an intermediate stop at BWI. A 10 minute ride between downtown DC and BWI with hourly service (supplemented by MARC Train service, a 45 minute but cheaper ride) could make BWI a realistic alternative for downtown DC travel. Otherwise, the 45 minute MARC Train ride with service every 25-40 minutes at best during rush hour and every few hours on the weekends, and only with service to New Carrollton and Union for DC connections, BWI isn’t much of an option to travelers even from downtown DC, much less further out
Second fiddle? BWI is regularly the busiest airport in the region.
I think the list of “blink and you’ll miss them” airlines briefly at BWI should have included the restaurant chain’s Hooters Air of the early 2000s. According to local news coverage the DMV (District/Maryland/Virginia) is getting a fourth commercial airport in Manassas, Va. about 30 miles from DC that will be focused on LCC operations. https://wtop.com/local/2024/09/when-will-commercial-flights-begin-at-manassas-airport-heres-what-we-know/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIaw-FleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcXyGEjLrEyRf6Pqu8t1LMwYihIwyRbRlwRchRcJtfVFzeQzHCP5W5zwNA_aem_2GHIRJnLrKuLjPej2kefoQ
CF,
Would the Manassas airport be similar to a Peotone (IL) where the politicians want it but the airlines don’t?
Isn’t that similar to an airport near St. Louis?
Mid-America is open (barely)
The Baltimore airport history overlooks one important fact.
Before it became Baltimore-Washington, it was Friendship International. It had been named that, after a church nearby.
Anecdotally…
When I was growing up, the only airport people used was Friendship. I remember when Dulles opened, and my father drove us out there just to see it. Back then, it was the very definition of boondocks.
People like to look down their noses at BWI… but for the two million of us who live in DC’s Maryland suburbs, BWI is a no-brainer. Although I never fly Southwest, it makes more sense for me to use a legacy carrier from BWI that involves a connection somewhere, than to spend hours fighting traffic, distance and logistics to get to/from Dulles or DCA.
So glad you stuck with DC week!
How did you get between GW and BWI? Bumming rides, Amtrak, MARC?
Southwest is also set to open a maintenance hangar at BWI later this year. A major investment, it’s the first Southwest mx facility in the northeast part of the country.