AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — Wanna get away?

After having four airlines serving the city briefly, Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport (AMA) is back to three carriers after Allegiant Air departed in September.

Michael Connor is the Director of Aviation at Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport, and told us that while it’s unfortunate, it didn’t have a sizeable impact on service.

“Allegiant leaving, I don’t think really had a big impact on us, just because they didn’t really have a lot of passengers,” he said. “With the, with all the leisure passengers that we’re seeing, I was actually kind of surprised that they didn’t have slightly better loads. But I think it does say a lot that Amarillo is really dedicated to the carriers that are still here.”

Connor told KAMR that the current carriers, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, and American Airlines, are all seeing increases of between 10 to 15% in passenger loads, with business traffic steadily climbing.

“You know, we look really hard at all of the numbers where passengers ultimately go, even if they go through a hub airport, like Dallas or Denver, you know, what’s their ultimate destination? And then we we kind of tried to fit that with a new airline. To figure out, you know, how that how our new route might fit into their route structure,” he explained.

As for future tenants, “no one, no one, particularly at this point, you know, we’re looking for destinations that have higher loads. We just really haven’t found too many other than the current destinations that we have. We’re looking, you know, at Phoenix, possibly additional traffic there. But it’s, you know, what carrier can fit that into their schedule, what carriers willing to take that chance on the numbers that we’re seeing? Just haven’t kind of really found that fit yet,” he said.

Of course, that doesn’t mean another airline won’t eventually make its way to the Yellow City.

After all, AMA has been performing well given the current conditions with inflation and price hikes across the board.

“Just keep flying the airport that’s really important to us,” Connor said.