Nashville International Airport is a fast growing airport

Nashville is growing so fast, even the airport is in on the game.

Nashville International Airport is the country’s fastest-growing airport for its size, according to an industry analyst group.

Rob Wigington, Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority president and CEO

The airport has been awarded the Airport Traffic Growth Award from Airline Network News & Analysis (abbreviated anna.aero), according to a news release, recognizing the airport’s 11.2 percent growth in passenger traffic during 2016 in the mid-sized airport category.

The recognition is the latest example of Nashville’s boom correlating to growth at the city’s airport, which has consistently set passenger volume records in recent years. More than 12.9 million passengers traveled through the airport in 2016, according to the release, its fourth-straight record-year. The airport expects to beat that figure by more than a million passengers in 2017.

To accommodate these new travelers — and, if the city’s business leaders get their wish, support further growth to come from added international flights— the airport recently unveiled a $1.2 billion expansion plan, dubbed BNA Vision.

“BNA, like Nashville itself, is on a pace of rapid growth, and all projections indicate that trend will continue,” Rob Wigington, Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority president and CEO, said in today’s release. “The robust increase in travel demand underscores the need for BNA Vision, our dynamic growth and expansion plan designed to keep Nashville International Airport a world-class facility for today and beyond.”