Iowa Air Travel sets New Highs while Highway Traffic, Crash Deaths Trend Steady
A spokesman for the Iowa Department of Transportation says air travel continues to outpace last year, while traffic on state highways remains relatively flat.
Stuart Anderson told the Iowa Transportation Commission that October was another strong month for air travel.
“October was another big month and another little bump up compared to last month, but still pretty consistently record numbers compared to past years,” Anderson says.
He says it’s not yet clear how the recent federal government shutdown will affect the numbers.
“The shutdown went from October 1st through November 12th, certainly in October you can see there weren’t really shutdown impacts, but that is pretty consistent,” Anderson says. “November, I think we’ll see some influence — that’s when we saw more of the impacts on flights being delayed or cancelled across the country. So that might influence the November numbers a little bit.”
On Iowa’s roadways, Anderson says vehicle traffic has been steady.
“The October ’25 numbers were about one percent higher than October of ’24. Year to date, it’s zero-point-two percent higher than 2024, so pretty flat numbers, but again these are at the higher level where we’re at in recent years,” Anderson says.
One key change on the roads is in fatal crashes. The number of traffic deaths stands at 251 through Wednesday (December 10), which Anderson says is a significant improvement — about 23% lower than the five-year average. There were 36 traffic deaths in Iowa last December, and so far there has only been one confirmed traffic death this month.
