The Centennial State is home to one of America’s busiest airports, in addition to a handful of regional gateways like Colorado Springs and Fort Collins and resort gateways like Eagle County Airport near Vail and Yampa Valley Airport near Steamboat Springs.
Of the state’s two main airports (Denver International Airport and Colorado Springs Airport), Chicago-based carrier United Airlines was the top dog when it came to passenger counts, with 23,112,000 people flying through DIA, while another 148,000 flew through Colorado Springs.
At the state’s resort airports, United finished third at Eagle County, with 66,200 passengers between June 2022 and May 2023, ranking behind American Airlines (209,000) and SkyWest Airlines (141,000 passengers), while Southwest Airlines was the top carrier at Yampa Valley Airport between April 2022 and March 2023, with 107,000 passengers.
Utilizing Google Trends, BetColorado.com took a break from Colorado sports betting and analyzed the most popular airlines of state residents by looking at the search results of each airline over the last 90 days (December to March).
Favorite Colorado Airlines For Residents Ranked
Surprising Airlines Lead Way in Colorado
While carriers like United and Southwest dominate the state’s largest gateways when it comes to passenger counts and flights per day, it seems like those with less of a presence are actually the most popular on search engines. Delta Air Lines (63 search interest score) and American Airlines (62 search interest score) beat out Southwest (48 search interest score), Frontier and Spirit airlines (23 search interest scores each).
Despite carrying just over 23.4 million (or 20.2% of the airports’ total passengers) between Denver, Colorado Springs, Eagle County and Yampa Valley — United Airlines didn’t crack the top five in Colorado. Delta, which has a market share of 4.76% at DIA (fifth overall), 2.92% at Colorado Springs (5th), 8.41% at Eagle County (4th) and 7.98% at Yampa Valley (5th) pulled off the upset worthy of Colorado betting apps as the state’s most popular airline by search volume scores.
Frontier, which was founded in Denver 30 years ago, didn’t do much better, ranking in a tie for fourth statewide in search volume (23) despite holding the third-largest market share at DIA.
Author
Christopher Boan has been covering sports and sports betting for more than seven years, including stops at ArizonaSports.com, the Tucson Weekly and the Green Valley News.
