(Radio Iowa) – More people than ever before flew out of Iowa’s commercial airports in 2025. The Iowa Department of Transportation’s Stuart Anderson says December numbers resumed the upward trend after a drop in November. “We ended the year up four-point-eight percent (4.8%) over calendar year 2024. So for the first time ever more than five million passengers flew out of Iowa’s eight commercial service airports,” he says. Anderson says the drop in November travel was due in part to the government shutdown. Back on the ground, December highway travel was down, but overall 2025 travel was up slightly.

“We were down about four-tenths of a percent compared to December of ’24. Of course, we did have some weather towards the end of the month, which probably impacted that a bit,” he says. “Over the entire year, we are two-tenths of a percent higher than calendar year ’24.” Iowa traffic deaths were at a record low of 259 in 2025, but Anderson says January started the new year with 24 traffic deaths, which is seven more than last January.”This month, we saw more fatalities in younger and older drivers, and we had at least one multi-fatality incident. So we’re hoping this is a bit of a bit of an outlier,” Anderson says.

The state’s top two airports in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids each saw record use in 20025. Anderson made his comments during a report to the Transportation Commission.