More holiday travelers flew out of Colorado Springs

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- New numbers released this month show that more people are flying out of Colorado Springs Airport around the holidays.

The month of December saw a 16% increase in the number of people flying locally.

According to a press release sent out by COS, for the month of December, the Colorado Springs Airport (COS) enplaned 71,862 passengers, bringing the total passenger number for the month to 143,517.

But despite a significant bump in December, the airport's overall traffic for the year was down slightly.

In total, 1,671,757 passengers traveled through the Colorado Springs Airport in 2019. That was a 3.1% year-to-date decrease from 2018.

Aviation director Greg Phillips expects this year's growth to demonstrate the same upward trend starting with the completion of renovations.

"We're about to finish the west half of the first floor next week, and then we'll move over to the east half of that and then we're done with that," said Phillips.

That's on top of the new LED lighting, raised ceilings and new upgrades to the common areas already put into place.