Summer travel figures at Gen. Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport are approaching record totals, and the administration is looking at more ways to keep passenger numbers on the rise.
“We're seeing really good traffic levels. We kind of have been comparing ourselves to the five years before COVID, and we're right back up in those averages,” said Gene Olson, Director of Airports for the Peoria Metropolitan Airport Authority.
This June saw 65,488 flight passengers come through Peoria International Airport, an increase of nearly 11% from 2023 (59,071).
“The June traffic was the second-best June we’ve ever had, and it was about 4% above the five-year average before COVID,” said Olson, noting PIA has one less airline (Delta) than it did before the pandemic.
“It was an interesting month, because during June we had 500 soldiers go out on military charters, and so when you take those 500 soldiers out of the count, we're still the second-best June we’ve ever had.”
Olson said a majority of the travel tends to be for leisure, although business travel has also increased. He said if the trends continue, PIA could be on a path to approaching its highest passenger numbers from 2019 in the coming years.
“If we can maintain our traffic levels the way we are, we've got a couple of things in the works that we're hoping will stimulate more traffic,” he said. “So I think hopefully we'll see record setting travel again fairly soon.”
Among the items “in the works,” Olson noted a $1.1 million effort that includes a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to work with United Airlines and American Airlines to develop routes to some additional major destinations.
“I think the best targets are direct flights from Peoria to Phoenix on American, and Peoria to Denver on United. It’s going to take a while because they’re still suffering from equipment shortages,” said Olson, pointing to a shortage of 737 jets across the industry.
“Once they get that taken care of, then I think they'll be able to free up a regional jet that will either serve the American to Phoenix or the United to Denver. So I think those two new flights, if we can get one or both of those, those will stimulate some more travel,” he said.
Olson says one of the bigger challenges they face is what’s called “leakage,” where a traveler from the Peoria area chooses to fly from a different airport.
“People like to make a lot out of competition between Bloomington (Central Illinois Regional Airport) and Peoria, but that's not the big deal. We have people from Peoria who go to Bloomington to get on a plane, and there are people from Bloomington who go to Peoria to get on a plane,” Olson said.
“The real ones that we want to target are the people who are driving to Chicago, because we think there's probably a lack of understanding of how much that actually costs them, in terms of the cost to operate your vehicle, the wear and tear on your car – all those things that go into owning and operating a car.”
Olson said the airlines can tell by seeing zip codes on ticket purchases when someone from the Peoria area opts to fly through a different city.
“We're trying to get that message out that if you don't support the flights that are here in Peoria, they're going to go away,” he said. “That not only hurts our existing activity levels and ability to keep the airlines we have; it really impacts the ability for us to get new flights and new destinations.”
Olson said the airport must remain constantly prepared for unexpected situations, such as the June 13 emergency landing for an 8-year-old girl who experienced a medical issue that ultimately resulted in her death.
“That was extremely tragic and kind of shocking for everybody. Frankly, that kind of thing can happen at any time,” Olson said. “Say we're doing snow removal in the wintertime, and that all the airline flights for that day are canceled, but yet we still have to go out and plow the snow and keep the runways clear and keep the airport open.
“You never know when there's an airplane flying along at 30,000 feet and they have a medical issue, or they have a mechanical issue or something, and they need to get down now. So it's kind of the ‘any port in a storm’ idea that we always have to maintain readiness for that.”
Olson said preparedness also requires some flexibility to respond to situations, such as the CrowdStrike cybersecurity malfunction on July 19 that caused widespread outages at many airports and airlines.
“It didn’t effect any of our airport systems, so the airport was fully operational,” said Olson, noting that United canceled one PIA flight and American didn’t cancel any but had delays from using a manual boarding pass process.
“Allegiant was a little bit more impacted; I think we lost three Allegiant flights that day, and their computer systems were down pretty hard,” he said. “So I think the different airlines had different exposures to that glitch and it kind of showed up.”
Olson pointed out that while the screens at the airport showing arrival and departure times functioned properly, the automated information that was relayed to the PIA website was effected by the malfunction.
“We didn't have the ability to get in and manipulate that, and so that was showing all these flights – probably five flights that went out that day – it was showing them on time, when we knew three of them were canceled and two of them were delayed,” he said. “So that was a bit frustrating for us.
“We've got out on the socials and just said, ‘Hey, this information's not correct. Check with your airline.’”
Olson said PIA is working with its website vendor to modify the system so they can manually update the arrival/departure information in the future.
