Sun Country has added 13 routes from Minneapolis. Unusually for a big announcement, 12 of the 13 are brand-new for the carrier from the Minnesota airport, excluding any very time-limited services and those last served 20+ years ago. Four of the 13 have no head-to-head competition.
13 coming Minneapolis routes
Using details from Sun Country's website, the 13 routes are organized below by start date. New York JFK had Sun Country flights almost continuously from June 1999 until January 2019; it carried 2.2 million in this period. Minneapolis-Detroit was served regularly until November 2001, so long ago that it doesn't count. To Kansas City, Sun Country has benefited from the exit of Southwest (ended May 2020).
Note: I've not included two more routes (St Louis and Milwaukee) as they're simply returning from being served in 2021.
Minneapolis to... |
Start date |
Flights |
Competition (flights in the week Sun Country starts) |
Find flights |
---|---|---|---|---|
Charlotte |
April 13th |
2x weekly |
American (28), Delta (21) |
|
New York JFK |
April 13th |
4x weekly |
Delta (28), JetBlue (14) |
|
Atlantic City |
May 1st |
2x weekly |
None |
|
Columbus |
May 4th |
2x weekly |
Delta (27) |
|
Louisville |
May 4th |
2x weekly |
Delta (14) |
|
Detroit |
May 5th |
2x weekly (later 4x) |
Delta (35), Spirit (7) |
|
Richmond |
May 19th |
2x weekly |
None |
|
Omaha |
May 26th |
2x weekly |
Delta (27) |
|
Kansas City |
May 29th |
2x weekly |
Delta (27) |
|
Wilmington (NC) |
June 1st |
2x weekly |
None |
|
Colorado Springs |
June 8th |
2x weekly |
None |
|
Traverse City |
June 16th |
2x weekly |
Delta (8) |
|
Rapid City |
June 19th |
2x weekly |
Delta (21) |
Richmond and Colorado Springs
Neither city is a stranger to Minneapolis. According to US Department of Transportation data, Delta (and before that Northwest) served Richmond between October 2002 and December 2021, almost always with RJs, latterly CRJ-900s. Some 786,000 passengers flew nonstop. At specific points, as recently as 2019, the route had 3x daily flights. DOT data shows that, in 2021, 46% of the Minneapolis-Richmond passengers were point-to-point.
Colorado Springs, meanwhile, had Northwest/Delta Minneapolis flights between April 1995 and August 2012; the pair carried 2.1 million passengers. After a long gap, Frontier operated 3x weekly summer-seasonally from April 2018-November 2019. It carried 47,000 passengers and had a seat load factor of 80%. Sun Country hopes that its 2x weekly will help achieve higher SLFs.
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Atlantic City and Wilmington
These cities have never had scheduled Minneapolis flights. Given Atlantic City has no hub carrier, booking data to/from Minneapolis isn't good: most passengers flew elsewhere and drove. But booking data is available for Wilmington.
Between January and September 2022, the North Carolina airport had about 8,000 roundtrip Minneapolis passengers, all flying via a hub. In the full year 2019, about 12,000. Running between June 1st and September 4th, Sun Country will have 28 roundtrip Minneapolis-Wilmington flights in the peak season.
Discover more aviation news.
76 summer Minneapolis routes
As of November 15th, Sun Country expects to serve 76 airports from Minneapolis next summer. Las Vegas has the most flights, followed by Orlando, Fort Myers, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Cancun, Tampa, Denver, and Miami. In joint tenth place are Eau Clare (which begins on December 1st) and San Diego.
Have you flown Sun Country recently? If so, share your experiences in the comments.