If Ohio Wants to Truly Compete, It Must Build a World-Class Airport in the Greater Columbus Area

To borrow two sports sayings: Ohio needs to go big or go home and believe that, if we build it, they will come.

There is beating the horse dead, then there is beating the dead horse even deader. On the issue of Ohio building a world-class airport, I will beat the dead horse so dead it must be a Hindu horse who believes in reincarnation. As every Ohioan in the Greater Columbus area who flies anywhere for business or pleasure or whose business requires staff to travel knows all too well, unless you happen to be traveling to one of the airlines’ hubs, you typically have to fly to a hub to get to where you are going. It is maddening. On multiple occasions in the last two years, I’ve had to rent a car from a hub airport to get home because the connection to Columbus got canceled and my rebooked flight wouldn’t be happening for several days.

You want a direct flight to Europe? Too bad. Asia? Too bad. Hawaii? Too bad. Alaska. Too bad. Anywhere fun outside of the rare added holiday or seasonal direct flight? Too bad. The only reason John Glenn International Airport (CMH) gets to use “international” in its name is because we have one flight to Toronto a day. Seriously, how sad is that for the 14th largest city in America? I always get a chuckle when landing in Columbus when the flight attendant welcomes us by noting “if Columbus is not your destination, we wish you well on your connection.” At CMH, there are NO CONNECTING FLIGHTS. CMH is always the end of the line.

If you want to gain status on an airline out of CMH, you have to fly often and likely make terrible connections to make it beyond the first status level. I remember one year to maintain my loyalty status I flew on 99 segments, with many of those segments part of the “fly somewhere to get somewhere” issue Ohioans face. It was miserable. If you’ve never lived in a hub city, it might not bother you, but, for those of us who have, it is travel hell.

In case you didn’t know, Ohio is the 7th largest state and Columbus is the 14th largest city in America, with Cleveland coming in at 54th and Cincinnati at 64th. Our busiest airport is Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE), which is ranked 46th followed by Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CIN) at 50th and CMH at 51st. CLE and CIN used to be busier, but both lost hubs from United Airlines and Delta Airlines, respectively. One of the reasons Chiquita Brands left Cincinnati for Charlotte and NCR left Dayton for Atlanta is because of the millions of dollars those companies lost due to Ohio’s pathetic airports. No company with staff who have to fly often will ever come to Ohio because our airports are so weak.

That is why for over a decade I have been the lone, and I mean lone, voice pushing for our elected officials to build a world-class airport in the Greater Columbus Area like Denver did when it abandoned land-locked Stapleton International Airport for Denver International Airport (DEN) in 1995. DEN is now the 3rd busiest airport in America and has led to a massive economic boom in Colorado over the last twenty-five years. You can pretty much get anywhere you want to go from DEN in one hop. Like Stapleton, CMH is landlocked, so there is no way to expand it in any meaningful way to make it more attractive for airlines and businesses. The plans to add a new terminal are little more than a joke, as the current terminals have empty gates still. 

The Wall Street Journal just released its 2023 airport rankings and CMH didn’t even make the list (CLE was 23rd and CIN was 25th). Our Midwest competitors for businesses did far better:

• Indianapolis International Airport — 4th (Midsize) and 47th busiest;

• Pittsburgh International Airport — 15th (Midsize) and 49th busiest; and

• Detroit International Airport — 5th (Large) and 20th busiest.  

Indiana also is a right-to-work state, putting Ohio at an even greater disadvantage in attracting businesses. There just isn’t much about CMH worth celebrating other than how easy it is to find parking.

As I have advocated, we need a governor, city and county elected officials, and business leaders in the Greater Columbus Area who will go all in on building a world-class airport—likely by massively expanding Rickenbacker International Airport in southeast Columbus. Similar to where Colorado built DEN, there is plenty of space to build an amazing airport for the Columbus area. With the right vision, our leaders could approach United, American Airlines, and Southwest Airlines which all have hubs in Chicago and convince them to move their hubs to Columbus. The arguments would be fairly straightforward:

• With your Chicago hubs sitting on Lake Michigan, the lake effect will continue to cause weather delays and cancellations that make your customers mad and cost you money;

• Illinois is one of the highest taxing states in America so your workers face huge tax burdens resulting in a sub-optimal hiring pool;

• Illinois lost more residents than any other state except New York so finding good workers is getting harder every year;

• Chicago is becoming a high-crime cesspool so your workers and customers face unsafe environments;

• Chicago highway traffic is among the worst in America;

• South Columbus has far less extreme weather issues so your flights will be delayed and canceled far less often, which will keep your customers happy and make you more money; and

• Ohio’s overall tax policies, crime rates, and traffic are far better than Illinois so everyone wins. 

Similar approaches could be made to airlines with hubs in other weather-ravaged, high tax airports like New York City and Philadelphia. East Coast airports from Boston to Philadelphia already suffer from enormous delays and cancellations due to severely strained flight paths and runway access. Last I checked, airlines suffer terrible customer service issues due to delays/cancellations and are always looking for ways to make more money. A world-class airport in Columbus would deal with both of those issues and lessen the congestion on the East Coast. 

It also would spur a much-needed economic boom in Ohio with gains that would benefit many of the Ohio counties currently hollowing out. For over a decade, JobsOhio has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars trying to pick winners and losers with little-to-no positive impact on Ohio’s private sector job growth. A far better and much more powerful economic development approach would be to do what Colorado did and use JobsOhio's funds to build a world-class airport that would become a crown jewel in the Midwest for transportation operations. With Ohio’s ideal geographic position within 500 miles of half the U.S. population, the attraction for businesses from all over the world to locate operations here would skyrocket.

If done right and supplemented by smart road infrastructure, the airport could invigorate southeast Ohio and also serve as an option for Ohioans living in the Greater Cincinnati area, as they have to go to CIN in Kentucky for flights with connections. It might make more sense to fly from Columbus without a connection. For example, if you live in Lebanon, Ohio, CIN is a forty-five minute drive, whereas Rickenbacker currently is an hour and fourteen minute drive from Lebanon. Thus, it would be a smart decision if you could nix a connection out of CIN that adds two hours to your total travel time by driving an extra thirty minutes for a direct flight from Columbus. You’d also eliminate the risk of a delay or cancellation on your connecting flight. The same calculus works for those in the Greater Dayton Area, especially if road routes are expanded to allow for quicker travel to Columbus.

Imagine how amazing living in Ohio would be if you could get direct flights to cities all over America, including to Hawaii, and to Europe, Central America, and Asia.

To borrow two sports sayings: Ohio needs to go big or go home and believe that, if we build it, they will come. The reality is they may not come if we build it, but that risk is better than the alternative; namely, they definitely won't come if we don’t build it. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that any of our elected officials, including Mike DeWine, Jon Husted, Andrew Ginther, or our congressional delegation, understand the importance of and economic impact a world-class airport would have on Ohio, its citizens, its businesses, and its ability to attract people and businesses from other states and keep Ohioans here. 

P.S. In follow up to my post about political accountability following the poor election results, it doesn’t appear that any of the players involved in being trounced twice by the Left in Ohio this year have suffered any consequences, including Ohio Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou, Ohio Right to Life President Michael Gonidakis, elected officials, or all of the worthless political consultants who made a killing making direct mail and TV ads that flopped miserably. Only in politics can so many people lose so much without one person getting fired.