So many of us were stunned and horrified by the fatal collision between an Army helicopter and American Airlines Flight 5342 in Washington, DC last week. A lot of the conversation in the aftermath has focused on safety concerns that come from high traffic volumes and the risks we saw from those close calls at Reagan National Airport.

In Missouri, we should be concerned about a different issue. Our ability to fly in and out of our home state could well be impacted by two things. First, the dominance of Southwest Airlines at both of our major airports, and second, the fact that Southwest Airlines looks like an increasingly unreliable option stemming from manufacturing problems at Boeing.

Recently, news broke of Southwest cutting air routes in large part because it can’t get its orders of Boeing 737s safely fulfilled. This is a huge problem for Missouri, since Southwest is the largest carrier in both the Kansas City and St. Louis airports. Other airlines have pulled back, particularly at the St. Louis airport. Sadly, Missouri’s largest metro is falling behind: just looking at a weekday in January using Orbitz and Southwest’s website, fewer flights to St. Louis originate from major economic centers across the US than those same cities’ flights to Charlotte. This, despite St. Louis metro being slightly larger than Charlotte, NC metro.