As it marks its busiest year in history, the Gen. Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport looks to build on the success and expand into the future.
Airport administrators and staff gathered in the terminal Thursday morning for a ceremony to announce its final passenger count for 2025, after already breaking the annual record in November.
“This isn’t just a one-time spike; this is a real shift. We’re not the airport that we were 10, 20, 30 years ago,” said Director of Airports Gene Olson as his Peoria International Airport [PIA] colleagues revealed panels showing the yearly total traveler count of 812,396.
“When I got here in 2009, we had 493,000 passengers for the whole year. That’s in and out, and that’s about 675 a day. So 812,000 passengers, that represents a 65% increase over what we had in 2009.”
PIA set its December passenger record with more than 70,600 passengers last month, marking the 15th time the airport set a monthly high in the last 17 months. The yearly total represents an increase of almost 18% of the airport’s pre-pandemic record of about 689,400 in 2019.
Olson said that although the annual record was already secured, the strong final month was unexpected.
“Actually in November, before Thanksgiving, we were sort of taking bets as to what our year end number would be. And I was hoping that we would crack 800,000,” Olson told reporters. “When the government shutdown happened, I was like, ‘Oh, there it goes. We’re not going to top 800,000,’ because we were going to be losing all these flights.
“So when we broke the record in November and then saw a number in December big enough to top over 800,000, I was almost in disbelief.”
The annual record comes as PIA continues to make improvements throughout the facility in hopes of continued growth. A $9.3 million taxiway rehabilitation is on track to begin this spring, and plans are in the works for a new parking facility along Dirksen Parkway.
Additionally, the first phase of work on a new air traffic control tower is almost complete, with phase two scheduled to get started in May, representing $25.5 million in local investment.
“That’s about a 15-month time frame, so we’re looking at late summer of 2027. Then we have a field cabling project that we have to do, where we take all the lighting controls and nav-aid controls that run into the old tower, they have to be intercepted and rerouted into the new tower,” said Olson.
“I don’t know the time frame of that one, but combine that with commissioning the new tower and you’re probably looking at another year. So 2028, we’re looking at, for that new tower being fully online and be able to demolish the old tower.”
Olson called the 2025 passenger record “a game-changer” that illustrates how PIA continues to evolve and meet expanding community needs.
“What it really shows is that the airlines have increased capacity here,” he said. “They’ve added seats, they’ve added flights, we’ve got larger airplanes—and the Peoria and Central Illinois region has responded by using that capacity.”
