Willard General Update

The Urbana City Council will host a Willard representative who will give details on our area airport. The News-Gazette blurb today:

Willard Airport update on agenda
URBANA — The city council will receive a briefing about Willard Airport on Monday night, almost a year after United Airlines joined American in flying out of Savoy.

Mayor Diane Marlin said a Willard representative will discuss flight data and give a general update.

Willard saw a 12 percent increase in departing

passengers last year, according to Executive Director Gene Cossey.

That increase was aided by the 16,896 departing passengers on United flights last year, he said.

[UPDATE: From the News-Gazette coverage of last night's Urbana City Council meeting (agenda here, video here). The airport report (direct video link here) showed the highest traffic in a decade:

In other business, the city council received an update on Willard Airport from Gene Cossey, its executive director.

Willard added its second airline, United, last June, and Cossey said it hasn’t taken anything away from the airport’s American Airlines flights. That and the addition of some more American flights helped 2017 become “a record year over any other years we’ve had since 2007,” he said...

2017 also saw a new Willard website where flights can be booked directly and the addition of an Einstein’s Bagels — the airport’s first concessions offering since about 2000, Cossey said.

Coming to the airport this year is an automated parking system that aims to speed up the parking process.]