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.
