Good morning, Toledo!

For many Toledoans, Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport feels almost unrecognizable from the airport they remember.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Toledo Express was a legitimate regional airport, with multiple airlines, dozens of daily departures and connections to major cities across the country. Families flew out of Toledo for vacations, business travelers connected through major hubs, and the terminal regularly felt busy.

Today, the picture is very different.

Commercial service has been reduced to a small collection of leisure routes, while most Northwest Ohio travelers make the drive north to Detroit Metro instead. An airport that once handled hundreds of thousands of passengers a year has become an afterthought for many people who live only minutes away.

So what happened?

The decline of Toledo Express wasn’t caused by one airline, one decision or one person. It was the result of decades of airline consolidation, changing economics, Detroit Metro’s enormous growth and decisions made here at home.

For this month’s Dispatch Deep Dive, we’re looking back at how Toledo Express lost its place in commercial aviation, whether anything could have been done to stop it, and whether the airport still has a path back.

There was a time when flying out of Toledo didn’t feel like choosing the smaller, less convenient option.

Throughout the 1990s, Toledo Express Airport had something that is almost unimaginable today: a legitimate network of commercial airline service. Multiple carriers connected Northwest Ohio to major hubs around the country, giving local travelers access to cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Atlanta and Orlando.

At its peak, the airport was served by as many as seven airlines and offered more than 40 daily departures. American, Delta, Northwest, United, US Airways, Continental and AirTran all had a presence in Toledo at different points during the era.

The high-water mark came in 1997, when Toledo Express handled roughly 680,000 passengers. AirTran helped fuel that growth with low-cost jet service, including popular flights to Orlando, while traditional carriers continued to connect Toledo passengers into their larger national networks.

For travelers in Northwest Ohio, Toledo Express offered something incredibly valuable: convenience without sacrificing connectivity. You could park close to the terminal, avoid the longer drive to Detroit and still reach most of the country with one connection.

For families heading on vacation and business travelers flying throughout the Midwest, using Toledo Express was simply normal.

But underneath that success, the airline industry was already beginning to change. Bigger hubs were becoming more powerful, airlines were starting to consolidate, and just 50 miles north, Detroit Metro was transforming into one of the most important airports in the country.

The conditions that helped Toledo Express thrive were beginning to disappear.

The fall of Toledo Express did not happen overnight.

There was no single announcement that suddenly changed the airport. Instead, service slowly began disappearing one route and one airline at a time.

After reaching its passenger peak in the late 1990s, Toledo entered the 2000s just as the airline industry was about to go through one of the most turbulent periods in its history. The dot-com recession weakened business travel, the September 11 attacks dramatically changed the economics of flying, and airlines across the country began looking for ways to cut costs.

Smaller airports were especially vulnerable.

Routes from cities like Toledo often relied on regional aircraft carrying passengers to larger airline hubs. Those flights worked when airlines had several competing hub networks and enough local travelers were willing to begin their trip at Toledo Express.

But as passenger numbers began slipping, those routes became harder to justify.

AirTran, which had played a major role in Toledo’s late-1990s passenger boom, eventually pulled out. Continental’s connection to Cleveland disappeared. Other routes were reduced or eliminated as airlines restructured their networks.

Every departure made the airport slightly less useful.

That created a problem that would follow Toledo Express for the next two decades. When an airline eliminated a destination, passengers had fewer reasons to check Toledo for their next trip. More of them began driving to Detroit Metro, where they could choose from significantly more nonstop flights, departure times and airlines.

Lower passenger numbers then made Toledo’s remaining routes less attractive to airlines.

The cycle fed itself.

By the middle of the 2000s, Toledo Express was no longer competing to grow from its 1990s peak. It was increasingly fighting simply to hold onto the service it still had.

And while Toledo was losing flights, the airport just an hour north was becoming more formidable than ever.

If there is one factor that separates Toledo Express from many other struggling small airports, it is geography.

Detroit Metropolitan Airport sits less than an hour from much of the Toledo area, and over time that proximity became one of Toledo Express’s biggest disadvantages.

As Detroit Metro grew into a major Northwest Airlines hub, and later one of Delta’s largest hubs following the Northwest-Delta merger, the gap between the two airports became impossible to ignore. Detroit offered more airlines, more destinations, more nonstop flights and significantly more departure times.

For Toledo travelers, the calculation became simple.

Why connect through another city from Toledo when you could drive a little farther and fly nonstop from Detroit?

That question became especially important for business travelers, who often place a premium on schedule flexibility. A traveler using Toledo might have one or two reasonable flight options in a day. From Detroit, that same traveler could often choose from several.

Price also played a role. Larger airports generally create more competition between airlines, and Toledo passengers could often find cheaper fares by starting their trip in Detroit.

As more people made that choice, Toledo Express entered a vicious cycle.

Fewer passengers meant weaker demand for Toledo flights. Weaker demand made routes less profitable. Airlines responded by reducing service or leaving entirely. And every lost flight gave local passengers another reason to drive to Detroit.

Eventually, Detroit Metro stopped feeling like Toledo’s competitor and started functioning as Toledo’s primary airport.

That is perhaps the most difficult part of Toledo Express’s decline to solve. The airport was not losing customers because Northwest Ohio stopped traveling. The region still generated plenty of air passengers.

They were simply beginning their trips somewhere else.

And once that behavior became normal, winning those passengers back became far more difficult than attracting them in the first place.

As the industry changed, Toledo Express began losing the airlines that had once made it a true connecting airport.

The departures did not all happen at once, but each one chipped away at the airport’s usefulness.

AirTran, which had helped drive Toledo’s passenger boom in the late 1990s with low-cost service, eventually left the market. Continental’s connection to Cleveland disappeared. Other carriers reduced frequencies or eliminated routes as their own hub networks changed.

Then came one of the more significant losses.

In 2011, Delta ended its service from Toledo, eliminating another traditional airline connection and leaving the airport increasingly dependent on American and Allegiant.

For a while, that combination gave Toledo Express a workable identity.

American connected Toledo passengers to Chicago O’Hare, where they could transfer onto flights across the country. Allegiant, meanwhile, focused on inexpensive nonstop leisure service to warm-weather destinations.

But even that arrangement eventually broke down.

In September 2022, American Airlines ended its Toledo service entirely, eliminating the airport’s last traditional connection to a major airline hub.

That departure was especially significant because it changed what Toledo Express was.

A traveler could no longer start at Toledo, connect through Chicago and continue almost anywhere in the country. If your destination was not one of Toledo’s limited nonstop leisure markets, Detroit Metro became the obvious alternative.

Allegiant remained, and its flights proved that there was still demand for convenient nonstop service from Northwest Ohio.

But the Toledo Express of the 1990s was gone.

What had once been an airport served by multiple major carriers had become, on the passenger side, primarily a leisure airport with a small number of destinations.

And after decades of airline departures, a difficult question became unavoidable:

Could local leaders have done more to stop it?

By the time Toledo Express had lost most of its traditional airline service, the biggest question was no longer just what happened.

It was whether anything could have been done to stop it.

The Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, which operates the airport, could not force airlines to stay. Route decisions are ultimately made by carriers based on passenger demand, aircraft availability, staffing, costs and profitability. Many of the forces that hurt Toledo, airline mergers, disappearing hubs, the decline of smaller regional jets and Detroit Metro’s growth, were well beyond the control of local officials.

Still, that does not mean the Port Authority was powerless.

Airports around the country compete aggressively for service through landing-fee waivers, marketing support, minimum-revenue guarantees and partnerships with local businesses. Toledo has used some of those tools over the years, including efforts to recruit airlines and retain local travelers.

The harder question is whether those efforts came early enough, and whether they were aggressive enough.

For years, Toledo’s biggest problem was becoming increasingly obvious: local travelers were choosing Detroit. Every passenger who drove north weakened the case for maintaining service at Toledo Express, and every lost route made Detroit even more attractive.

Could the Port Authority have done more to convince businesses to book employees through Toledo? Could it have built a larger community-backed fund to attract new routes? Could the airport have been marketed more aggressively around its biggest advantage, convenience? And could modernization projects have been pursued sooner, before the airport had already lost much of its commercial network?

Those are fair questions.

There were also moments that drew public criticism. In 2022, local officials questioned why Toledo Express had not applied during an early round of a major federal airport-terminal improvement program, particularly at a time when billions of dollars were becoming available to airports across the country.

None of that proves that different leadership would have saved Toledo Express.

Even the best-run small airport in the country would have struggled with Toledo’s proximity to Detroit Metro and the larger changes reshaping the airline industry.

But after watching an airport go from dozens of daily departures to a handful of leisure flights, it is reasonable to ask whether every possible opportunity was taken to slow that decline.

The fairest conclusion may be that Toledo Express was dealt an extremely difficult hand.

The more important question is how well that hand was played.

It is easy to look at Toledo Express today and assume the airport is barely hanging on.

From a commercial passenger standpoint, that perception is understandable. The terminal is quieter, the departure board is smaller, and the number of scheduled flights is nowhere close to what Toledo once had.

But that tells only part of the story.

Toledo Express remains an important aviation and economic asset because passenger airlines are just one piece of what happens there.

The airport is home to the Ohio Air National Guard’s 180th Fighter Wing, one of the most visible military operations in the United States. It also supports cargo flights, corporate aviation, aircraft maintenance, general aviation and other aviation-related businesses.

Its physical infrastructure remains significant as well.

Toledo Express has long runways, large amounts of available land and facilities capable of supporting operations that have little to do with whether someone can book a commercial flight to Chicago.

That distinction matters.

The decline of passenger service does not necessarily mean the airport itself has failed. In some ways, Toledo Express has evolved from primarily being viewed as a commercial gateway into a much broader transportation and aviation complex.

Cargo may be especially important to its future. Northwest Ohio sits within trucking distance of several major Midwest markets, giving Toledo potential advantages for companies moving freight by both air and road.

That means Toledo Express could become more economically valuable over the next several decades even if passenger traffic never returns to its 1990s peak.

For travelers, however, that success can be difficult to see.

A new cargo operation or aviation business may create jobs and investment, but it does not replace the convenience of being able to board a flight in Toledo and connect to the rest of the country.

That leaves Toledo Express in an unusual position.

The airport is still alive.

It just serves a very different purpose than the one many Toledoans remember.

While traditional airlines slowly disappeared from Toledo Express, one carrier found a model that continued to make sense.

Allegiant did not try to make Toledo part of a massive connecting network. Instead, it focused on something much simpler: flying Northwest Ohio travelers directly to places they already wanted to visit.

That distinction has been critical.

Rather than operating multiple flights a day to a major hub, Allegiant typically flies a route only a few times per week. That allows the airline to concentrate demand onto fewer flights while avoiding the cost of maintaining a large daily operation in Toledo.

The destinations are different, too.

Instead of asking Toledo travelers to connect through Chicago, Cincinnati or another hub, Allegiant has focused heavily on leisure markets, particularly Florida and other warm-weather destinations.

For many travelers, that creates a compelling alternative to Detroit.

A family heading to Florida may be willing to structure its vacation around a limited Toledo schedule if the tradeoff is a nonstop flight, easier parking, shorter lines and a much simpler airport experience.

That model also avoids one of Toledo’s biggest disadvantages.

Toledo Express cannot compete with Detroit Metro on the number of destinations it offers. But it can compete on convenience.

If the exact flight a traveler needs happens to leave from Toledo, the smaller airport can suddenly become the more attractive option.

Allegiant’s continued presence also suggests something important about the Toledo market: people are still willing to fly from Toledo when the right route is available at the right price.

The challenge has never necessarily been a lack of travelers.

It has been finding a type of airline service that works despite Toledo’s proximity to one of the largest airports in the Midwest.

And that may be the most important lesson from Allegiant’s success.

Toledo Express does not need to become a smaller version of Detroit Metro to survive. In fact, trying to compete with Detroit on frequency, connections and sheer number of destinations is a battle Toledo is unlikely to win.

Its opportunity is to be something different: smaller, easier, faster and strategically connected to destinations where Northwest Ohio travelers already want to go.

The future of Toledo Express may depend less on rebuilding what it once was and more on accepting what it can realistically become.

Probably not in the way many Toledoans remember it.

The days of seven airlines, dozens of daily departures and connections through major hubs across the country are unlikely to return. Detroit Metro is too close, airline networks are too consolidated, and the economics of regional flying have changed too much.

But by 2040, Toledo Express could still look significantly better than it does today.

This is the dream scenario.

Toledo Express experiences a genuine resurgence in passenger service. Multiple airlines enter the market, the airport offers more than 15 nonstop destinations, and annual passenger traffic climbs toward 500,000 or more.

Toledo would once again become a legitimate regional commercial airport rather than primarily a leisure airport.

It is possible, but given Toledo’s proximity to Detroit Metro and the direction of the airline industry, it is difficult to see this as the most likely outcome.

This is the outcome I believe is most realistic.

Allegiant or another leisure carrier expands its presence. A second airline could enter the market. Toledo builds a network of roughly seven to 12 useful nonstop destinations and potentially regains a connection to a major airline hub.

The terminal and passenger experience improve, and more Northwest Ohio travelers begin checking Toledo before automatically booking from Detroit.

Toledo Express would not return to its 1990s peak, but it would become a genuinely useful small commercial airport.

For Toledo, that would be a significant comeback.

Toledo Express remains relatively close to what it is today.

A limited number of leisure flights continue operating, destinations come and go, and commercial passenger traffic remains a relatively small part of the airport’s overall activity.

Meanwhile, cargo, military operations, corporate aviation and aviation-related industrial development become increasingly important.

The airport would remain economically valuable, but most Northwest Ohio travelers would continue using Detroit Metro for the majority of their trips.

This is the worst-case scenario.

Scheduled commercial passenger service eventually disappears altogether.

Toledo Express would continue operating, but its identity would shift almost entirely toward cargo, military, corporate and general aviation.

The airport itself would survive.

The ability for Toledo residents to board a scheduled commercial flight from their hometown would not.

These percentages are not an official forecast. They are my estimate based on where Toledo Express stands today and the larger trends affecting regional aviation.

But of the four possibilities, Scenario 2, the healthy small airport, seems considerably more realistic than either a dramatic renaissance or the complete disappearance of passenger service.

And there is one major wildcard that could shift those probabilities.

One of the biggest problems facing small airports today is that airlines have fewer economical ways to serve them.

For decades, 50-seat regional jets helped connect cities like Toledo to major airline hubs. As those aircraft have aged and become more expensive to operate, airlines have increasingly shifted toward larger planes that require more passengers to make a route profitable.

That has been especially damaging to smaller markets.

But 2040 is still far enough away for that technology to change.

Over the next decade or two, airlines could gain access to new generations of more efficient regional aircraft, hybrid-electric planes or other aircraft specifically designed to make shorter, lower-demand routes economical again.

If an airline could profitably operate a 30- to 70-seat aircraft at a significantly lower cost, airports like Toledo could suddenly become much more attractive.

A route like Toledo to Chicago twice a day might make sense again.

So could Toledo to DC.

Or Toledo to Charlotte.

That does not mean any of those routes are guaranteed to return. New aircraft programs are expensive, airline strategies change quickly, and promising aviation technologies do not always reach commercial service.

But it is an important reason not to assume Toledo Express in 2040 will look exactly like Toledo Express today.

The most realistic comeback is probably not a return to the airport’s 1990s peak.

It is a smaller but much healthier airport, one with several useful nonstop destinations, potentially a connection back into the national airline network, better passenger facilities and a much larger role for cargo and aviation development.

That would not recreate the Toledo Express people remember.

But it would give Northwest Ohio a real airport again.

For Toledo Express to grow again, attracting new airlines and destinations is only part of the challenge.

The other part is getting Northwest Ohio travelers to actually use them.

That has proven difficult.

After years of declining service, many local travelers have simply developed the habit of starting every trip by searching Detroit Metro. In many cases, Toledo Express is not even considered unless someone already knows a nonstop flight is available.

That creates a difficult problem for any airline thinking about entering the market.

A new route can receive incentives, marketing support and plenty of excitement when it is announced. But eventually, the flight has to stand on its own.

If the planes are not consistently filled, the airline will move that aircraft somewhere else.

For Toledo travelers, the decision often comes down to price and schedule. Detroit may offer a cheaper ticket, a better departure time or more flexibility if something goes wrong.

Those are legitimate reasons to drive north.

But there will also be times when the difference is relatively small.

That is where the future of Toledo Express may ultimately be decided.

If a Toledo flight costs slightly more but saves an hour of driving, offers cheaper parking and gets passengers through the airport faster, some travelers may need to view that convenience as part of the value of the ticket.

Because every successful route makes the next route easier to attract.

If an airline launches a new Toledo destination and consistently fills its planes, the Port Authority suddenly has something valuable to show other carriers: proof that Northwest Ohio passengers will support local service.

One successful route can lead to another.

The opposite is also true.

When a route fails, it becomes another piece of evidence suggesting that Toledo travelers would rather drive to Detroit.

That means the future of Toledo Express will not be determined entirely in airline boardrooms or Port Authority offices.

It will also be determined every time someone in Northwest Ohio searches for a flight and decides which airport to use.

If Toledo wants a better airport, eventually Toledo has to prove that it will support one.

Toledo Express will probably never look exactly like it did in the late 1990s.

The airline industry has changed, Detroit Metro has grown into a dominant regional hub, and the economics that once supported dozens of daily flights from Toledo largely no longer exist.

But that does not mean the airport’s best days are necessarily behind it.

The opportunity now is different.

Toledo Express can still become a stronger, more useful airport by leaning into what it does best: convenience, easy access, affordable parking and nonstop service to destinations Northwest Ohio travelers actually want to visit.

Its future may not be measured by whether seven airlines return or whether passenger totals ever reach the heights of 1997.

It may be measured by whether Toledo can build an airport people remember to check before automatically driving north to Detroit.

For anyone who remembers a busier Toledo Express, the decline can feel like another piece of the city that disappeared over time.

But the airport is still there. The infrastructure is still there. The passengers are still here.

The question heading toward 2040 is whether Toledo Express can find a new identity, and whether Northwest Ohio is willing to help support it.

Well that’s all for now, thanks for reading.

Let us know what you want covered on the next Deep Dive!

Sincerely, Eli