PIA - A History: Events of 1979
Beginning in the late 1970s, events surrounding the Greater Peoria Airport accelerated in frequency. These changes can be credited (or discredited, depending on your perspective) to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Therefore, this and many future posts in this series will focus on a single year. Ozark Air Lines vigorously opposed deregulation, warning proponents that it would result in the loss of service in smaller markets. The Greater Peoria Airport Authority supported deregulation initially, viewing the change as a means to obtain more airlines, but began to modify its view after the announcements of several service cuts. EFFECTS OF DEREGULATION There were cutbacks before deregulation. Sometime in 1978, probably summer, Ozark changed its Detroit-Peoria-Moline-Omaha routing to Detroit-Peoria-Des Moines. Citing the need to deploy its planes on other routes, this service was eliminated December 14. The reduction left Peoria with a single roundtrip to the Motor City, which wa...