Rockford Story

Great story on Rockford from AZCentral.com. Here is part:


The airport went from a passenger count of about 1,400 in 2002, when O'Brien started with the airport, to more than 230,000 this year, he said, with the name change occurring in phases through those years.

He expects to eclipse the 300,000 passenger count next year, but O'Brien said changing the name was only a small part of that."It starts first with convincing the airlines. When we're trying to sell them on RFD, they're staring at us like, 'You live in the shadow of the world's busiest airport and you've got no passenger service, what are you nuts?' " O'Brien said. "We said, 'I don't want you to start service to Rockford, Illinois, I want you to start service to Chicago-Rockford, a backdoor to 13.1 million people.' "