How Small Airports Are Shaping Big-Sky America: Inside TakeOff North America 2025

Published on November 26, 2025

By: Yousuf M. Basil

By Yousuf Basil

(Tallahassee, Florida)“The participation has really stunned us, actually, this year,” said Nico Spyrou, Head of Partnerships at Routes, looking back on TakeOff North America 2025 in Tallahassee. “The event is now in its eighth iteration, and we go from strength to strength. This year, we have had over 180 organizations, over 15 of the region’s carriers attend, and crucially, the most important metric for us is the number of meetings, and we’ve had over 700 meetings in just two days alone. And that figure really can’t be underestimated.”

Those 700-plus meetings are the heartbeat of TakeOff North America: short, focused conversations between airports, airlines, and destinations that can turn into a new route, a restored connection, or a deeper partnership between a regional community and the wider world.

Organized by Routes, TakeOff North America is one of the few aviation forums devoted exclusively to domestic air-service development. It’s built for regional and small-hub airports—the places that rarely dominate headlines, but whose fortunes often dictate how well North America is actually connected.

A Conference Designed for the Underserved

Spyrou is clear about why TakeOff was created in the first place.

“The idea essentially came from giving smaller regional hubs and airlines an opportunity once a year to come together to really discuss their like by strategies, understand if there are any synergies where they can work closer together,” he explained. “And for us TakeOff North America was then born.”

The format reflects that purpose. Over two days, delegates move between:

• Pre-scheduled one-to-one meetings with airline network planners
  
• Around eight conference sessions, featuring market analysis, traffic data, and demand forecasts
  
• Networking moments where airport directors, tourism officials, and suppliers compare notes on what’s working—and what isn’t
  

For many smaller airports, this is the one time each year they have concentrated access to the people who can actually change their service map.

The Stakes: Fragile Recovery and Connectivity Gaps

Behind the busy meeting rooms is a more fragile reality. While U.S. aviation has broadly bounced back from the pandemic, the recovery has been uneven.

In her presentation, Faye Malarkey Black, President and CEO of the Regional Airline Association (RAA), laid out the picture from the regional side. After leading the initial recovery—thanks to right-sized aircraft and staffing—regional airlines saw pilots pulled into larger carriers at unprecedented speed. That left many small communities with reduced frequencies, fewer routes, or no service at all.

RAA data show that:

• More than 200 U.S. airports have lost some level of commercial service since 2019
  
• Over 30 airports have lost half or more of their flights
  
• Non-hub airports are down significantly in departures and routes, even as many larger airports gain seats
  

There are now signs of improvement—regional departures are up compared with 2020, and some airports are slowly regaining flights—but the recovery remains fragile and uneven, particularly at the smallest fields.

That’s what makes an event like TakeOff North America more than just another industry gathering: it’s one of the few places where those gaps are actively, systematically addressed.

“A Diamond Waiting to Be Discovered”

From Spyrou’s vantage point, the maturity of the U.S. domestic market is both a challenge and an opportunity.

“For ourselves, looking at the domestic market, it’s a highly mature aviation market,” he said. “What that gives regional airports though is an opportunity to be a point of difference, to be a diamond waiting to be discovered by an airline and it’s those carriers that understand that actually if you look away from your major hubs and the key growth leisure markets, there are certain points where you can launch routes to put aircraft into and see some real key financial returns.”

For airlines facing tight margins and limited fleet growth, that means searching for profitable, underserved niches rather than piling into the same big-city corridors. For airports, it means proving they’re more than just a dot on the map—showing that there is real, sustainable demand that justifies fresh investment in connectivity.

Roanoke and Cody: Two Case Studies in Growth

On the floor in Tallahassee, that future-focused mindset came through in conversations with airports from very different corners of the map.

In southwest Virginia, Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport is seeing the kind of growth many regions would envy. Executive Director Mike Stewart told Travel and Tour World that 2024 set an all-time passenger record, and 2025 is on track to beat it—unless something drastic happens late in the year.

That growth is driven by a diverse local economy: Virginia Tech and roughly 50 higher-education institutions in the broader area, plus a deepening medical and biotech base anchored by Carilion Clinic and Virginia Tech research. At the same time, the Roanoke and southwest Virginia region is emerging as an outdoor destination—mountains, lakes, rivers and trails offering a less crowded alternative to better-known hotspots.

Airlines have noticed; capacity has been added. But Stewart’s message at TakeOff is that the region’s demand curve is still climbing, and there’s room for more.

In northwest Wyoming, Cody/Yellowstone Regional Airport is making a different but equally compelling case. Director Aaron Buck describes Cody as a strategic, scenic gateway to Yellowstone National Park—just around 40 minutes from the east entrance, along a road President Theodore Roosevelt once called “the most beautiful 40-minute drive in America.”

Cody has seen an uptick in travelers seeking outdoor, bucket-list experiences: wildlife, geysers, hiking, and wide-open landscapes. But when the airport lost Delta service in 2021, it also lost a significant portion of its international visitors. Buck is at TakeOff to talk with airlines about restoring that connectivity, strengthening summer frequencies, and making Cody the default air gateway for more Yellowstone-bound visitors.

Both airports underscore the same point: regional markets are evolving, and many are growing faster than their traditional service patterns suggest.

“Rooted in the People and Rooted in Relationships”

For all the charts, forecasts, and network models presented at TakeOff, Spyrou is adamant about what ultimately moves the needle.

“Of course, data is important. It’s always going to be important, and it becomes more and more important as we look at things like catchment and an understanding of where we can pull leakage from,” he said. “However, being in person at an event together in the room, speaking to each other, building relationships, whether they’re embryonic or quite mature and advanced, is absolutely crucial and in my opinion, air service development is rooted in the people and rooted in relationships.”

That philosophy is baked into the structure of the event: short meetings, but many of them; enough conference content to set the context, but not so much that it crowds out deal time.

Looking Ahead: TakeOff North America 2026

If Tallahassee was about reconnecting and rebuilding, TakeOff North America 2026 is already being framed as the next step in that journey. Routes has announced Northwest Arkansas as the upcoming host, giving another rising regional market the chance to put its story, numbers, and ambitions at the center of the conversation.

For the organizers, the through line is clear: keep creating a focused, data-informed, relationship-driven space where regional and small-hub airports, airlines, and destinations can shape the next wave of domestic connectivity—one meeting, and one new route, at a time.