WICHITA, Kan (KAKE) - A long line of people took over the sidewalk at Dwight D. Eisenhower airport Monday morning. Travelers and staff joining in on the celebration of 70 years of commercial flight service.  

The community enjoyed games, hot dogs and burgers from All Things Barbecue. Some pleasantly surprised by the celebration.  

"It's April fools day and a lot of people were like ah that's an April fool's joke but I'm like hey I'm finally going to the airport on the right day and we get some free food," said traveler James Oliphang.    

Others were reminiscing on a time before tight security.  

"That was one thing I missed about out here is because here you have to have a ticket to get up to the concourse to see the planes where in the old airport you could just walk up to the concourse and go and get anything to eat," added resident Larry Grimen.  

ICT Airport Marketing manager Valerie Wise has been with the airport for about 30 years.  She said the first airport was 1,900 acres which has grown to 3,300. 

Wise said there has been many other changes and added, "Airlines have had mergers over the years so no longer is there ... Northwest Airlines doesn't fly anymore, Continental, US Airways, Air Midwest, Air Tran, there's been a lot of mergers." 

Since 1954 the airport, formerly known as Mid Continent, has served almost 75 million passengers.   

"We've grown we've had record passenger travel traffic in 2019 this year we're about four percent above 2019," said Wise.  

With everything happening with Boeing, growth to other destinations could slow down for this year and possibly next.