Peoria Station

Peoria Int'l Airport is on course for a 2019 passenger record. That is because it continued to post record volume through the summer. According to this , 65,919 passengers were handled in June, the largest ever tally for that month. PIA then broke its July record with 68,447. In also broke its August record when it handled 56,639 passengers. Rising passenger volume - 3.25 percent higher the the first eight months of 2019 v. 2018 - suggests 2019 will be another record year. In 2018, PIA handled 672,594 passengers. If that percentage holds, the final tally will be around 694,000.  - David P. Jordan

Image consciousness dominated PIA in the 1990s, but airport officials seemed powerless to reverse declining service offerings. In 1997, however, a shift in fortune was spurred not by PIA but by a competitor 50 miles away. THE RISE OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS REGIONAL AIRPORT Starting in 1945, the Greater Peoria [Regional] Airport had dominated the Central Illinois region in passenger volume for five decades. No other facility came close. But by the late-1990s, it was clear PIA's reign was threatened by Bloomington-Normal Airport (BMI). Renamed Central Illinois Regional Airport in 1996, BMI quickly lived up to its name. Officials revealed in late-summer that they were pursuing a recent upstart named AirTran Airways, which would offer daily nonstop jet service to Orlando, Florida. Bloomington's Pantagraph revealed that CIRA was competing with PIA for this service. AirTran chose CIRA despite the airfield's limitations. First, Runway 02-20, opened a few months prior, was too s...