When novelist Thomas McGuane described his (adopted) home state of Montana as flyover country in a 1980 Esquire article, he put a name to the dismissive attitude with which coastal Americans supposedly perceived any state not touching an ocean.
What originated as a self-deprecating term from a Midwest native (McGuane was born in Michigan) became slang for the portion of the U.S. commonly seen through plane windows on transcontinental flights. Taken at face value, this implies that very few, if any, travelers look at Middle America as a destination.
The data don’t entirely agree.
According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the three busiest airports in the Midwest saw around 20% more arriving flights in 2024 than the three busiest coastal airports. Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Detroit Metro Wayne County Airport and Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport combined saw over 570,000 flight arrivals during the year, compared to less than 500,000 for Los Angeles International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport and Orlando International Airport. Of these, Chicago O’Hare was the busiest by far, bringing in more than 300,000 flights.
But airports in the Midwest were not always so highly visited. In the late 1960s, the available air travel infrastructure in parts of the Midwest was insufficient to meet passenger demands. This prompted the creation of a designated air travel company for the region: Midwest Airlines was based in Milwaukee and operated independently from 1984-2009 before merging with Frontier Airlines. Since then, no comparable airline has emerged to exclusively serve the area.
Not only did the Midwest have a slower start in commercial airfare, but it also sits at a disadvantage for air freight. Due to their position at the edge of the continent, cities on the eastern and western seaboard have easier access to international commerce. The coastal U.S. hosts the biggest “megahub” for international travel in the country, with John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City ranked second in the world by OAG Megahubs Index 2023.
“I think the issues with the Midwest are the same disadvantages that the Midwest has always had, which is that it’s in the middle of the country. And so, if you’re thinking of centers of trade, it helps to have a deep-water port,” Peter Orazem, an economics professor at Iowa State University, said.
Orazem said international trade will likely be responsible for around one-fifth of the U.S. economy for the foreseeable future, with ports giving coastal areas an advantage over Middle America.
But ports are not the only transport infrastructure critical to trade; other methods of transportation present opportunities for different industries to flourish in the Midwest.
“Of course, if you have nodes of trade, then a lot of transportation results in that. So you have the whole hub of rail and trucking that spans the U.S.,” Orazem said.
Trucking alone is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States. The Midwest’s extensive highway system provides the infrastructure for this and other overland transportation of freight, which is especially important for heavier cargo like coal.
“There’s some argument to [flyover country], but that’s assuming that everybody’s flying. There are some people that are driving,” Ernie Goss, an economics professor at Creighton University, said. “Trucking would be more apt to be centered in the middle of the country, whereas airlines [are] on the coast.”
Alongside transportation, local and regional economies are also heavily influenced by the availability of labor, which can present issues in sparsely populated areas. According to Goss, there’s no clear answer to whether increased air travel infrastructure in the Midwest would increase labor flow. In fact, different professions tend to disagree about the direction of the relationship between the factors.
“Economists, their view is: ‘Find out where they go, then design the transportation system. Don’t design the transportation system and then hope that individuals follow,’” Goss said. “Like on a campus, economists would wait and find out where the students are walking before they built the sidewalks. [Architects] would build the sidewalks beforehand.”
And the Midwest’s own history exemplifies this. Orazem said the need to ship grain to the coasts in the 1800s was a driving force behind intercontinental transportation.
“There’s literally a debate within the economic history profession as to whether or not the railroads caused the development of the Midwest, or the Midwest actually caused the development of the railroad. And in some ways, you can imagine it went both ways,” Orazem said.
While the creation of more Midwest airports or specialized airlines would serve to advance the region’s economy, market signals should be the ultimate deciding factor, Goss said.
Omaha Airport is an example of a preexisting hub that has followed a blended model of market-infrastructure interaction. In 2024, the airport announced an expansion worth almost $1 billion. In the same year, it saw a record number of passengers, with over 5 million people flying through.
“The expansion in the airport there is to accommodate past growth, but it’s also in anticipation of future growth. A little of both, and I would argue that’s the way it should be,” Goss said.
According to TSA checkpoint travel numbers, more than 400 million people have already passed through security at U.S. airports this year. Global flight travel in 2025 is expected to increase by 6.7% compared to 2024 — the International Air Transport Association estimates 5.2 billion passengers will fly throughout the year.
Not all of the travelers will touch down in the Midwest, or anywhere in the U.S. But it seems they won’t all only be flying over, either.
