Connecting SLC to the World | A Look Inside Air Service Development

How do airlines decide to provide flights to and from Salt Lake City? What about new routes? 

Air service development is a strategy that airports use to establish and maintain air service for their communities. In short, air service development is how SLC recruits airlines to fly in and out of SLC. Nate Lavin is the air service and business development manager for the Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC). In this interview, he shares more about his role in managing air service at SLC and what the future holds for air travel at the airport.  

Tell us more about air service development. What does a typical week on the job entail? 

Air service development is a relationship-based, data-driven field that is designed to increase air access to the airport. Air service includes not only new routes and airlines, but also maintaining the service we do have and making sure that it’s successful. My job is to increase passenger and air cargo connectivity. 

One of the reasons why I love my job is that no day is really the same, every day is different. I’m constantly working with airlines, community partners and people at the airport to make air service development work. A typical week is filled with engaging with different airlines, whether that’s communicating with perspective airlines and providing updates to them or working with our current carriers to make sure they have what they need to succeed. If there’s a route that isn’t performing well, we will work with the airline and develop a plan to improve performance.  

My team spends a lot of time developing relationships not only with the airlines but also with our community partners. An airline wants to know that the community is going to support their service when they bring it here to Salt Lake City. It’s fairly high risk for an airline to start a new market and so we need to do our best to make them feel confident that their service is going to succeed.  

SLC works with partners in the tourism industry, such as Visit Salt Lake and the Utah Office of Tourism. We work with the Economic Development Corporation of Utah, the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity and World Trade Center Utah. We also work with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because they contribute a lot of passenger traffic in and out of our airport. On the cargo side, we’re working with Utah Inland Port Authority.

Another big part of my job is data analysis—getting the data that we need to support our proposals to the airlines. There’s public passenger data that SLC has access to through the U.S. Department of Transportation. But there’s also some secondary data sources that are important.  For example, Utah tourism data—when people visit Utah, how are they getting here? And what are they doing when they get here? What are they spending on airfare and where are they staying? All this information is really valuable to the airlines. 

This year has been an exciting year for SLC, with both new and returning routes and new airlines. Two new airlines have started service at SLC—Hawaiian Airlines and Avelo Airlines. A third new airline, WestJet, will begin service in 2025. And Delta will begin non-stop service to Incheon, South Korea in June 2025.  

Are there criteria that SLC has in making these decisions about new airlines and new or returning routes? What are the considerations that go into those decisions?   

The most basic answer to that question, and the most fundamental, is demand. My team needs to understand the demand throughout the country and throughout the world from SLC. In other words, where does this community need to go? 

SLC is very excited about Delta’s new Seoul/Incheon route coming in June 2025. That route will provide great connectivity into all of Asia. Up until this point, SLC hasn’t had non-stop service to Asia for over a decade. But that doesn’t mean that people from Salt Lake City weren’t traveling to Asia. It just means that they were stopping along the way to get there, whether that was in Los Angeles, San Francisco or Seattle. We analyzed that data to see just how many people a day are flying from SLC to Asia. How are they getting there? And does it make sense for us to have a non-stop flight?  

Of course, there is additional criteria we need to consider, for instance what airline(s) to approach for our targeted markets. With Seoul, Delta made the most sense because they are our hub carrier. They have joint venture partners throughout the world, which includes Korean Air. Our connection to Seoul will offer that seamless connectivity to the rest of Asia. SLC does not have enough demand to fill an airplane from Salt Lake City to Seoul every day—just Seoul, just the Korean demand. But if you start adding in the rest of Asia to that mix and the connectivity that Korean Air will provide, then it starts to make more sense. And if you add in the connectivity that Delta provides in Salt Lake City, then you really have a business case.  

Another criterion that we look at it is, are the current routes succeeding? Are the planes full? Are the fares healthy? Are the airlines that are operating the current routes doing well? If they’re not, then now may not be the appropriate time to ask for more. We need to focus on making sure that our current service is doing well first, then we can start building upon that and adding more.  

Finally, we want to consider, where does our community need to go? Perhaps they’re not going now because there isn’t non-stop service but if there were, would they support the service? We’re prioritizing international growth at SLC but we’re also focused on providing more low-fare options for the community. We take feedback from our community seriously. My team often asks, where are the gaps in our air service and how can we best fill them? 
 
What are some of the values that undergird your vision for air service at SLC? 

Salt Lake City just opened this brand-new airport—The New SLC—and we’re committed to providing a wonderful experience for our passengers. SLC works to have reliable carriers operating out of the airport, providing a great level of service for our passengers and getting them to where they want to go, safely.  

We also value getting passengers where they need to go more directly. Most travelers don’t want to have stops; they want non-stop service to wherever they’re going. My team tries really hard to connect our community to the world as seamlessly as possible.

Any new developments in air service development that you can share publicly? 

SLC has had a successful last few years. Since 2022, we’ve added six new carriers to the market. That growth is driven by a couple factors: a growing market and a strong economy, which equates to more demand. Utah’s population is growing and that’s one of the reasons why SLC built this new airport, to accommodate that growth.  

The old airport was vastly undersized for the number of passengers that were traveling through it. We had no room to add additional flights, especially on the international side. We only had three international-capable gates. And they were tied up for most of the day. There was an operational need to add more.  

With the new airport, SLC has doubled its international capacity with room for future growth. Of course, my team will continue to focus on domestic growth, but I would say where we see the most opportunity is international air service. We do see more opportunity in Europe. And more opportunity in Canada. WestJet is a great example of efforts that have been underway to grow our connectivity into Canada. We see huge opportunities in Mexico and Latin America. 

Asia was a huge check mark for SLC; the airport is really excited about that new service. As the Seoul/Incheon route develops and matures, my team sees the opportunity for more. Once SLC gets Seoul up and running and doing well, I think the airport will add even more routes to Asia along with potential routes to the South Pacific region. Demand for that region—specifically Australia and New Zealand—is growing. Those long-haul flights are a little farther out in the future. But we’re having those conversations now.

There are more exciting announcements in the pipeline, some sooner rather than later. But if the last couple years have been any indication of where we’re headed—new airlines and new routes on existing carriers—I would just say, stay tuned because SLC’s growth is not done yet.