Hobby Airport continues to grow as hub for business travel with new commitments from 2 airlines

flight tracking

With Southwest and Allegiant doubling down on Hobby Airport, the travel hub continues to grow. Image via fly2houston.com

In the estimation of frequent flier Chris Martin, Houston's continually expanding William P. Hobby Airport soars as an "exciting and excellent" hub for business travelers.

Martin is senior vice president of global business development in the Houston office of travel agency Wings Travel Management and one of the leaders of the Houston-based Texas Business Travel Association. He says Hobby Airport's location — seven miles southeast of downtown Houston — and its low-cost flight options hold great appeal for business travelers, especially those with tight travel budgets. And that appeal continues to grow, thanks in part to initiatives at Hobby undertaken by Southwest and Allegiant airlines.

On January 8, Dallas-based Southwest, the No. 1 carrier at Hobby as measured by passenger traffic, unveiled a $125 million, 240,000-square-foot maintenance complex at the airport. It's the largest maintenance facility in Southwest's network. The complex includes a 140,000-square-foot hangar for aircraft maintenance.

"The new hangar continues to showcase our dedication to Houston," Southwest spokesman Dan Landson says. "We've grown continuously over the last several years, and we see more growth in our future, which the hangar will help facilitate."

Southwest's new maintenance complex speeds up airline operations in Houston and helps "get travelers on their way more quickly," Landson says.

At the public debut of the maintenance complex, Southwest Chairman and CEO Gary Kelly told reporters that the airline plans to add a "significant" number of flights at Hobby over the next five to 10 years. He suggested that Houston's beefed-up flight schedule could include brand-new routes to South America.

"We see a lot of opportunity to continue growing," Landson says, "and linking Houston to the places that our customers want to go — whether domestically or internationally."

Today, Southwest offers nearly 200 flights a day from Hobby to almost 70 destinations in the U.S., Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Hobby opened a $156 million, five-gate international concourse in October 2015.

Six days after Southwest took the wraps off its new maintenance complex, low-cost airline Allegiant said that beginning this May, it's launching seasonal twice-weekly service at Hobby with nonstop flights to Asheville, North Carolina; Destin-Fort Walton Beach, Florida; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Savannah, Georgia. No airlines at Hobby currently serve those destinations.

Allegiant will become the fourth airline to operate at Hobby. Aside from Southwest, American and Delta airlines currently fly out of Hobby, but Southwest is the only one with international service. Last year, JetBlue shifted its Houston operations from Hobby to the larger George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

In 2018, Hobby served almost 14.48 million passengers, up 7.7 percent from 2017 and surpassing 14 million for the first time. Figures for 2019 aren't available yet.

Any increase in passenger traffic at Hobby would certainly be propelled by time-constrained business travelers. In a ranking released January 29 by personal finance website FinanceBuzz, Hobby flies into the top spot on the list of the best U.S. airports if you're running late for a departing flight. To come up with the ranking, FinanceBuzz looked at data for the country's 45 busiest airports.

FinanceBuzz says Hobby's low average wait time at security checkpoints, just under 14 minutes, contributed to its No. 1 ranking.

"The chances of catching Hobby at its busiest are pretty low, and its relatively small number of departing passengers each day helps the airport from getting bogged down with too many travelers," FinanceBuzz reports. "While it's lower percentage of on-time flights might hinder those who are punctual, [this] can be the difference between catching or missing a flight for those running late."

By comparison, Bush Intercontinental ranked eighth on FinanceBuzz's list of the worst U.S. airports if you're running late. It's weighed down by an average 25-minute wait at security checkpoints, according to FinanceBuzz.

"Once you get through security, you've got the sixth-largest terminal on our list to navigate, which puts this airport as one of the worst for late travelers," FinanceBuzz reports of Bush Intercontinental.

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New report ranks Texas among top 10 states where AI could disrupt jobs

AI Workforce

A new nationwide report examining where AI could "reshape" the most jobs has ranked Texas No. 9 among the most at-risk states for AI job disruption.

The new SmartAsset report compared all 50 states and the District of Columbia to calculate the estimated percent of the workforce employed in the 26 occupations with the highest AI exposure, as determined by June 2026 research by the Virginia Economic Information and Analytics Division.

The findings revealed that 500,000 Texas workers, or 3.55 percent of the total workforce, are employed in occupations with "high exposure to potential AI disruption."

This also places the Lone Star State as the 9th most at-risk state in the U.S. where AI exposure can lead to "declining hiring demand, wage pressure, task automation, and other forms of disruption."

"States with larger concentrations of highly exposed occupations could experience more pronounced labor-market changes, particularly in roles where core tasks are more vulnerable to AI-driven restructuring," the report's author wrote.

Texas' biggest cities, like Houston and Austin, are known for their thriving tech and business industries, and the study noted that many of the occupations within those sectors are the most at risk. The Virginia Economic Information and Analytics Division said the top five most AI-exposed occupations in the U.S. are: mathematicians, proofreaders, correspondence clerks, court reporters, and media and communication workers. Additionally, computer programmers, database administrators, web developers, telephone operators, and communications equipment operators round out the top 10 most at-risk positions.

These are the 16 remaining occupations most exposed to AI disruption, in order:

  • Data Entry Keyers
  • Statistical Assistants
  • Office Support Workers
  • Interpreters and Translators
  • Database Architects
  • Software Quality Assurance Analysts
  • Medical Transcriptionists
  • Software Developers
  • Writers and Authors
  • Payroll Clerks
  • Web Designers
  • Miscellaneous Computer Occupations
  • Insurance Claims Processors
  • Telemarketers
  • Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Programmers
  • Bookkeeping and Accounting Clerks

A separate SmartAsset report from April 2026 found about 20.5 percent of Texas workers use AI to do their jobs in some capacity. That trend will continue to shift further as employers and employees choose to adopt — or reject — AI implementation.

Across the U.S., Washington topped the list as the state with the highest concentration of AI-exposed jobs, with nearly 5.7 percent of the state's workforce employed in the 26 most at-risk positions. SmartAsset said Washington's high prevalence of technology companies is a significant factor that skyrocketed the state to the top of the list.

"Home to major technology companies including Microsoft, Amazon, T-Mobile and Expedia, the state has large numbers of computer programmers and software developers, two occupations with high exposure," the report said.

Meanwhile, Mississippi ranked No. 51 with the lowest concentration of AI-exposed jobs in the nation. About 22,500 workers in Mississippi, or 1.93 percent of its workforce, are at risk for AI disruption.

The top 10 states where AI could reshape the most jobs are:

  • No. 1 – Washington
  • No. 2 – Virginia
  • No. 3 – District of Columbia
  • No. 4 – California
  • No. 5 – Utah
  • No. 6 – Maryland
  • No. 7 – Colorado
  • No. 8 – New Hampshire
  • No. 9 – Texas
  • No. 10 – North Carolina
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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

UH lands $1.2M NIH grant to fight superbugs using AI, quantum sensing

drug defense

The fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA is getting science fiction-like upgrades at the University of Houston thanks to a new four-year, $1.26 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The university says the recent funding brings total federal support up to $3.5 million for 11 years for the project, which uses AI and quantum-sensing technology to better understand how bacterial proteins develop resistance to drugs.

Any medical professional will tell you that one of the worst things that can happen is almost killing an infection. Bacteria that survive attacks from conventional antibiotic treatments emerge tougher, more resistant and more aggressive than before–making them much harder to treat. A good example is the superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

UH chemistry professors Yuhong Wang and Shoujun Xu are working on this issue. They know full well that fighting superbugs requires new technology and new approaches, which is what they aim to pioneer with their new grant.

“Drug-resistant bacterial infections such as MRSA are becoming harder to treat, creating an urgent need for faster ways to understand how antibiotics and other small molecules interact with bacterial proteins,” Wang said in a news release.

Wang and Xu’s work centers around GTP, a cellular fuel that can cause tiny changes to a cell's structure when it mutates. Sometimes, those shape changes make it easier for drugs to breach the wall and attack the cells.

The UH scientists are employing AlphaFold, an AI-powered tool that can scan large molecular libraries in seconds. From these models, they can see promising drug combinations for future testing.

Once identified, the team uses their invention, super-resolution force spectroscopy, to monitor the cells. Tiny magnetic beads are attached to genetic material, then magnified to see how strong that material is when pulled. They can measure this incredible microscopic process through an atomic magnetometer, typically used in quantum physics. Combined, all these tools allow a high-definition look at how each molecule might respond to new chemical approaches.

“We're the only chemists in the world that use an atomic magnetometer for biological research,” Xu said. “It's a technique developed by physicists, and there is usually a gap between techniques developed by physicists and biological applications. Yuhong and I have been bridging that gap together for the past 10 years.”

Eventually, Wang and Xu hope to develop powerful software that can be used by drug manufacturers to model cellular responses. With enough predictive data, the software could even get ahead of superbugs’ own mutation, allowing drugs to be developed before new strains arrive.

"We want an algorithm where you input a protein sequence, score the mutation hotspots, and develop new inhibitors before a drug-resistant species even emerges," Wang added.

SpaceX to get more than 700 acres of Texas wildlife refuge in land swap

Space News

A federal judge on Monday, September 21, refused to block the Trump administration from giving SpaceX more than 700 acres of wildlife refuge as part of a land swap in Texas, while environmental groups vowed to continue their legal challenge.

U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. declined the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction to prevent the parcel exchange, saying they failed to prove it would worsen ecological risks to a Gulf Coast region already transformed by billionaire Elon Musk’s rocket operations.

In June, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved moving forward with the deal with SpaceX, which would surrender 683 acres the company owns in exchange for the federal land in the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The 103,000-acre refuge spans four counties along the Texas border and is home to animal habitats and historical landmarks.

Maps show the land SpaceX would acquire would be closer to the company's launchpad near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The swap amounts to a gift of public lands to SpaceX, “clearing the way for bulldozers to tear into this wildlife refuge as soon as next week and turn a public treasure into a private payday,” said Laiken Jordahl, a spokesperson with the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the lawsuit alongside other opponents including tribal groups. Jordahl said Monday that the litigation will continue even as the exchange goes forward.

“This court order is not the final word. These lands hold incredible spiritual, historical and conservation value for the people and wildlife of South Texas. We won’t stop fighting to keep this irreplaceable public wildlife refuge safe from SpaceX bulldozers,” Jordahl said in a statement.

The lawsuit asks the federal court to halt the exchange, which has worried SpaceX opponents in the area who have long criticized the company's expanding footprint over lost access to beaches and concerns over exploding rockets.

The Fish and Wildlife Service didn’t respond to a request for comment on Monday’s decision. Previously, a spokesperson had said the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation.

The agency issued a final environmental assessment report in June that determined the exchange would cause no significant impact to the area. The report said the federal government believed the acquisition would represent a “net conservation benefit” and provide “substantial long-term conservation value and improving landscape-scale habitat connectivity across refuges in South Texas.”

The judge said that the plaintiffs offered “relatively weak” evidence of environmental harm.

“While they rightfully argue that the preservation of wildlife and historical lands furthers the public interest, they present no evidence demonstrating that the Property will suffer aesthetic, environmental, cultural, or historical degradation during the pendency of this lawsuit,” Rodriguez wrote in his ruling.

In addition, the judge said a preliminary injunction would result in modifications to SpaceX’s development plans, “placing additional hardship on the company’s ability to meet milestones and contractual obligations.”

SpaceX did not return an email seeking comment on the judge's ruling.

The space exploration company first broke ground in Texas more than a decade ago and has expanded rapidly, so much that SpaceX employees last year voted to incorporate their own local government called Starbase.

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