The Eastern Iowa Airport in Cedar Rapids set a new record with 1.5 million people traveling through the airport in 2024.
The record marks a 9 percent increase from 2023, which saw 1.4 million people fly with CID.
Pam Hinman, CID’s director of marketing and communications, said the increase aligns with the national trend of increasing passenger numbers.
“If you have a strong, diverse economy, it stands to reason you’re going to have a strong airport,” she said. “The airlines can see how things are going, and so they invest in an airport by increasing the number of seats.”
Hinman said the addition of three new routes in 2023 helped propel the passenger increase. The routes range from the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Miami International Airport, and Fort Lauderdale.
Iowa City resident Stephanie Hushcha began flying CID in 2021.
“Since that time, I definitely noticed that the airport is busier,” she said.
Hushcha said she thinks there is plenty of wiggle room for more routes.
“I think it would be so great to have an option to be able to fly out to New York City when you’re connecting to Europe,” she said. “I know there’s some seasonal routes out of Legion directly to Los Angeles, but I think that they could have more of those direct routes for people in the area.”
While the airport itself is at the mercy of airliners for additional routes, CID is still taking steps to expand internally.
“We are in the fourth and final phase of our terminal modernization project, and that will provide additional square footage and some additional gates,” Hinman said. “So, the whole project should be done this fall. It’s about 10 years in the making. When that is completed, we will be future proof for many years to come.”
This final phase will include the addition of 30,000 square feet and four new terminals, increasing the total number from nine to 13. Additional rooms like a sensory room, a pet relief area, and an outdoor patio will also be completed in the fall.
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For Iowa City’s municipal airport, the national passenger increase hasn’t been entirely apparent.
The airport’s manager Michael Tharp explained that with no air traffic control tower, the airport isn’t able to track its takeoffs as efficiently. The airport instead uses its fuel flow to track large-scale trends like flight upticks.
“We did see a little bit of an increase on our low lead fuel sales, but not super dramatically. It was about a 3 percent increase,” he said.
Tharp doesn’t foresee CID’s increase impacting Iowa City Municipal’s as the latter focuses on general aviation. That being said, any safety changes CID or airports as a whole adopt, Iowa City Municipal will follow suit.
“We’re in a situation where if there’s another massive airline accident … Investigators are going to look at and issue reports and recommendations for changes and things like that. So, we’ll take them as they come. Our goal is, obviously, to maintain a safe and functional industry,” Tharp said. “Any airplane crash is one too many.”