A continuing trend of increased air travel resulted in the General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport reporting its highest passenger count ever recorded in July.
“The attitude here is wonderful. Yeah, we’ve been doing really well,” airport director Gene Olson said after PIA reported a record 80,836 passengers for the month — a 26% increase over July 2024.
“The airlines have been adding flights and seats. We're seeing additional frequencies to the destinations that we already have, and then we had a couple of new ones. So things have been going great for us for a while, really going back a year.”
By topping the 80,000 milestone in July, PIA has set new records in 10 of the last 12 months. It comes after the facility served nearly 79,000 passengers in June and about 72,800 in May.
“Anytime you cross over a nice round number threshold, it's always kind of a time to celebrate a little bit,” said Olson. “It's just a nice number that we've never achieved before.”
Olson credits the string of success to people having a greater desire to travel.
“I think in the post-COVID period, there was a lot of pent-up demand, and we saw probably the leisure side of that recover first,” he said. “Video conferencing and things like that have kind of hurt business travel, but I think we've seen a lot more business travel also picking up in the last year.”
He said many airlines have been increasing the number of available seats on flights to and from Peoria.
“It's one thing if the airlines increase the number of seat availability and then they don't sell those seats, then those seats are going to go away,” he said. “But that's not what's been happening here. They've been putting extra flights, extra seats in the market, and people have been buying them. So it's just been very gratifying for us to see.”
The news of July’s milestone hits just as the airport is gearing up for the traditionally travel-heavy Labor Day weekend. PIA is anticipating more than 14,000 travelers over the holiday, about 17% more traffic than a year ago.
Olson said another reason for the airport’s run of record months is “load factor” — the percentage of seats being filled on each flight.
“That's always a great thing to be able to go back to the airlines and say, ‘Look, our load factors are doing so well’ that they talk about ‘spilling.' If your load factors are too high, then the airlines are going to see people spilling out of their seats and into either a competitor’s airplanes, or into another mode of travel," he said.
“So when they start to see spilling, they'll usually respond by adding more seats. We're in that really good position to be able to go to the airlines and say, ‘Look, we're filling all the seats that you're giving us. Let's talk about more.’”
