{"id":423979,"date":"2026-01-23T00:54:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T00:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/423979\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T00:54:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T00:54:07","slug":"peoria-international-airport-celebrates-record-breaking-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/423979\/","title":{"rendered":"Peoria International Airport celebrates record-breaking year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">PEORIA (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/\">25News Now<\/a>) &#8211; Peoria International Airport is celebrating a new monthly passenger record for December, as well as a yearly record for 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">The finalized reports show that December 2025 set a new monthly record with a total of 70,672 passengers at PIA. This record-breaking month also helped push past the all-time annual record of 812,396 total passengers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">The total amount of passengers increased by 18.15% when compared to 2024, it also surpasses the airport\u2019s previous record which was set back in 2019 by almost 18%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">These new records mark a new period of growth for PIA, which has not been seen in over two decades. A passenger record has been set in 15 of the past 17 months.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">\u201cThis moment represents far more than a record number,\u201d said Gene Olson, the director of airports for the Metropolitan Airport Authority of Peoria. \u201cPIA today is not the airport it was 30 years ago\u2014or even 15 years ago. We have evolved alongside our community, and these numbers confirm that Central Illinois is choosing to fly through PIA! This is a new era for our airport and for the region we serve.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Leaders at PIA believe that this growth shows the airport not only recovering from the pandemic, but even surpassing the growth of that time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">The announcement comes at a time when the airport is still working towards expansion, with Phase 1 of the Air Traffic Control Tower project nearing completion. Phase 2 is also set to begin in May.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">The project represents a $25.5 million investment in local infrastructure Other projects in the works include the Taxiway Alpha Rehabilitation and a new parking facility along Dirksen Parkway.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">You can watch <a href=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/\">25News<\/a> &#8211; any newscast, anywhere &#8211; streaming <a href=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/livestream\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/livestream\">LIVE<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">25NewsNow.com<\/a>, our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/page\/get-the-new-25-news-now-app-today\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/page\/get-the-new-25-news-now-app-today\/\" target=\"_blank\">25News mobile app<\/a>, and on our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/page\/how-to-watch-25newsnow-on-ctv-and-apps\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/page\/how-to-watch-25newsnow-on-ctv-and-apps\/\" target=\"_blank\">WEEK 25News SmartTV streaming app<\/a>. Learn more about how you can get connected to 25News streaming live news <a href=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/page\/how-to-watch-25newsnow-on-ctv-and-apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" title=\"https:\/\/www.25newsnow.com\/page\/how-to-watch-25newsnow-on-ctv-and-apps\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WEEK. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PEORIA (25News Now) &#8211; Peoria International Airport is celebrating a new monthly passenger record for December, as well&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2967,164967,4,450,451,3,58793,201970,30446,17164,452,453,1975],"class_list":["post-423979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-2967","tag-25news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-peoria","tag-peoria-international-airport","tag-pia","tag-record","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}