KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Easy in, easy out. Holiday demand at Kansas City International Airport feels more like a Christmas stroll.
Airport officials said they’re pleased with the relaxed pace and steady flow in the airport’s new terminal, four days before Christmas’s arrival.
They feel the terminal is passing a major test. The TSA projected Thursday as being one of the year’s busiest travel days.
The new $1.5 billion terminal opened in February, making this the terminal’s first major December surge. When it opened, airport officials said it was designed to accommodate big crowds, like the ones seen during busy holiday weeks.
Thursday afternoon’s crowd inside the airport terminal was large but moving at a smooth pace, despite a projected uptick of 24% in traffic from the 2022 holiday season.
About 410,000 are expected leading up to Christmas Day and the period thereafter.
“We’re really pleased with the start of this holiday,” KCI spokesperson Justin Meyer said Thursday.
Meyer said the higher number of expected passengers is due, in part, to the addition of more airlines and more flights than the old trio of KCI terminals could handle.
Additionally, 17 gates for TSA screening await the public. On Thursday afternoon, passengers were being sent to their gates of departure within five minutes.
“We built this to be a scalable, expandable facility,” Meyer said. “When things get busy, it’s easy to operate. Our screening partners have really staffed up. They have so many lanes open. Not a lot of lines. Things are really smooth.”
Meyer also said airport police will be focusing on trouble at passenger pickup. That area of the airport terminal was still overcrowded during Thanksgiving week.
Meyer believes it’s improving, and not as many drivers are parking at the curb to wait for arriving passengers. Airport police wrote 20 tickets to violators in late November, he said.
KCI officials recommend using the airport’s cell phone lot, which is a 3-minute drive from the pickup area.
“It’s so easy. People are coming in at different times. It’s not super crazy out here. I was in L.A. a couple of weeks ago. It was madness, and here, it’s nice and easy,” said Sara Rojas, an arriving passenger from Denver.
“Everybody’s friendly — that’s what I love most about the Midwest. That’s what I love about going in and coming home to Kansas City. Everyone’s nice,” said Ian Wright, a passenger from Olathe, Kansas.