You Can't Get There

It's time for a game we've played before, folks: Why is it so damned annoying to book decent flights from Ft Myers, Florida*, to Syracuse, NY?
*RSW is my closest airport, an hour away. Next closest would be Punta Gorda, but flights from there go to smaller cities instead. Fort Lauderdale is easily two hours away, not counting rush hour and accidents, and the last half hour is through ungodly east coast traffic. And even from there, there aren't many nonstops.

(You may remember my mother's "I-grew-up-in-Syracuse" answer: They don't make it easy to get there because they know no one goes to Syracuse unless they have to.)

There are essentially no nonstop flights. There are and/or have been some on bottom-of-the-barrel discount airlines, the kind that fly one flight a day, a few days a week, but not on 'real' airlines.

Layovers are either ridiculously short (I saw one for 34 minutes!) or insanely long (no one wants to spend 6 or 7 hours at JFK). I want a layover that's long enough to be realistic, meaning probably 90 minutes at the very least, but not more than three hours. Ideally not more than two hours, but you can't find that, either.

Flights tend to either leave at 6 AM, or get in after midnight---and how could they help it, after that 6 hour layover?

I want to go. I want to visit my aunt and go to Apple Festival. But I have to gripe a bit before I get over this annoyance and book the least bad itinerary I can find.

Stupid travel industry. I need teleportation.