GREENVILLE, Wis. — On a cold, clear morning in northeast Wisconsin at Appleton International Airport, vehicles pulled up to the terminal doors regularly, dropping off fliers on late morning flights.
Inside, flight information boards were full.
It was a much different story five years ago when the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic trimmed aviation to a bare minimum.
“Back in 2020, nobody really knew what was going to happen and how the recovery was going to go,” said Jesse Funk, the airport’s service and business development manager. “As we got into March, there were people who said in three weeks, four weeks, we’ll be back to normal. We obviously saw that wasn’t the case. It started to be two years, three years before we got back to normal.”
He said passenger numbers are back to where they were in 2019 — and more.
“We’re back to our passenger levels, but the makeup of the passengers is very different than it was right around the time of COVID,” Funk said.
Leisure travel led the recovery, with business travel making gains in more recent years.
At Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport, a once empty long-term parking lot is now filled with rows of vehicles.
“Not that long after the pandemic started, the parking lot was empty. Today, we’re nearing capacity,” said Airport Director Marty Piette. “We actually did run out of capacity late last year as well as spring break. We’ve paved a little more of our parking lot, anticipating spring break travel to be busy into the draft, summer and, of course, the regular NFL season.”
He said he expects continued growth this year.
“2025 will hit, or exceed, 2019 numbers,” Piette said. “We were relatively close this year with the growth we’ve seen with our airline partners.”
Funk said some travelers are approaching their trips differently than in years past.
“A lot more leisure trips added to the end of business trips,” he said. “What was normal in 2019, maybe a Monday to Thursday business trip now in a lot of cases, extends through the weekend.”
