I live in Southern IL, and from the amount of traffic and people that came for the eclipse (including an additional Chicago <-> Carbondale day roundtrip Amtrak, that sold out in under 24 hours) -- why didn't the Airlines consider adding temporary Commercial and/or Charter service to either SIU airport in Carbondale or MWA airport in Marion?

I would have thought the planes would have sold, especially selling trips from either ORD or MDW (a lot of Chicago area people were in town), if not MKE and MSN (there were a lot of Cheese Heads too that came down) -- much shorter round-trip via Air for day-trippers. Amtrak sold out at $160/roundtrip/person for Train service

Perhaps something that may be considered for the 2024 Eclipse?

MWA does have 8-seater turbo-prop regularly scheduled Commercial service to STL, so I guess there was (very limited) space connecting thru STL (Cape Air, and the codeshare with AA out of STL)