Airport Experience® News - ACDBE Issue 2026

DIRECTOR’S CHAIR

share from the other majors as well. WARD: I wanted to turn to the capital program, Elevate CVG. Can you share the key elements and how that capital development is going to impact the passenger experience? KRAUTER: There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work happening now. Like other airports that were de-hubbed, we’re going through a transformation, and it really starts with a baggage handling system. Delta had a baggage handling system that was designed to support a connecting hub environment – now it needs to work differently. We’ll replace it with a baggage handling system – the board has authorized about $200 billion around that project. That’s going to take until 2029, however, I’ve challenged the team to try to accelerate that. That’s probably one of the biggest elements…but there are a lot of things that we’re doing that will fundamentally remake the airport. Probably one of the most visible things that people will see is [an update to] the vertical transitions throughout the building. We’re going to take all that vertical circulation, figure out what we need, what we don’t

seat capacity. The problem, of course, is with world events being what they are and oil being where it’s at, how much can we really look ahead and [accurately predict]? There may be variations around how fast or how slow things happen, but we recognize that, in general, we’re moving up. Our job is to make sure that we are anticipating reasonable growth scenarios… and looking out ahead to anticipate the things that we need to put in place. We’re not going to find ourselves at a competitive disadvantage or causing issues in the passenger experience because we didn’t plan. WARD: Low-cost carriers, in particular, are struggling. You’re not overly exposed on the ULCC side, correct? KRAUTER: Since we have the great diversification that we have, we can still offer very competitive average air fares here, but we also have strength in that diversification so we’re not overly exposed. In the LFA (low fare airline) space, we have Frontier Airlines , Allegiant Airlines and, to a lesser extent, Sun Country Airways . Delta Air Lines still has roughly 30-35% market share, and we have healthy market

Above: CVG hasn’t been an airline hub for more than a decade but some vestiges of the old model remain. A capital project called Elevate CVG will move the airport further toward the origin-and-destination model.

Below: The Elevate CVG program will update the airport’s ticketing and baggage claim areas, among other projects.

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AX NEWS JUNE 2026