Peoria Airport Soon to Go International

The Greater Peoria Regional Airport will soon become a thing of the past.

As airport officials continue to hash out plans for a new $30 million to $40 million terminal, they are looking at creating a new image and logo, but also a name change appears to be headed down the runway.

The Airport Authority's finance and project committee on this week viewed three possible logos, each showing slight variations of a sweeping arc - two of which are similar, slimmer versions of the Nike "swoosh" - next to the words "Peoria International Airport."

"I don't want to forget where we came from," said airport director Ken Spirito, explaining how the new arc borrows from the airport's current logo and the line trailing from an image of a globe to the rear of an airplane.

"We're changing, but not entirely, just creating an image for the direction we are going."

The Springfield airport changed its name in 2004 from Capital Airport to Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport. The change was made as part of preparations for the city's 2009 bicentennial celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birth.

The new name, Peoria International Airport, would incorporate the airport's three letter identifier, "PIA."

While there are no regular commercial flights to international destinations, Spirito said private charters, both business or leisure, regularly fly out of Peoria.

Because the airport has U.S. Customs agents present, it is considered an official port of entry. In fact, on Wednesday, a Chicago-based charter airline, USA 3000, had a 160-passenger Airbus 320 returning from the Caribbean diverted from Chicago O'Hare to Peoria because of weather problems in Chicago.

The committee took no action on the logo or name.

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