Kansas City Intl (KMCI)

Kansas City International sits on the Missouri River bluffs northwest of downtown, and it is the namesake metro of the Center this game grew up inside. Two long north-south parallels do the airline work, spaced unusually wide, with a single crosswind runway cutting east-west across the field.

Kansas City runs south flow as the prevailing configuration and north flow as its reciprocal, working both parallels; the crosswind 9/27 stays landable but out of the flows. Real MCI arrivals come down four corner-post STARs rather than the cardinal axes, so the gate spread leans northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest, with St. Joseph and a western fix filling the gaps. Southwest dominates the airline mix here as a focus city, backed by Delta, American and United mainline, a full regional feed, and a real FedEx and UPS cargo presence that brings the heavies.

This is the Busy tier: a genuine hub step up from the Steady fields without the full weight of Atlanta or Denver. It is also a port of entry, so Southwest's Mexico and Caribbean leisure runs file international.

Runway layout