Final passenger numbers are in for 2017 at Kelowna International Airport.
In December, 177,131 passengers flew through Kelowna, to bring this year's passenger increase up to 9.3 percent.
Last month actually amounted to the second busiest in airport history, as the only higher number came back in August, which saw 179,153 people.
Airport Director Sam Samaddar says that puts growth at close to 20% over two years.
"It's tremendous growth for really any airport - any airport in the country or elsewhere - to see that kind of growth," he said.
"Obviously we're very, very excited, very, very happy with the 2017 outcome, as we really approach the 1.9 million passenger mark."
Kelowna finished roughly 6500 passengers away from that 1.9 million mark last year, which was an increase of 161,357 compared to 2016.
Samaddar says this changes the timelines on future expansions.
"It certainly puts more urgency on the planning side of it, and our teams are certainly working to try and get those next phases of design work completed, so that we're ready sooner rather than later to pull the trigger on those developments when we need to," he said.
He says staff started design work on a terminal expansion last year, and will look to finalize that work this year.
The 177,000 passengers in December made it the second busiest month in history, just behind last August and just ahead of last March.
2017 also had the largest year-to-year increase, with a 22% bump in numbers between April 2016 and 2017.
Airport Director Sam Samaddar says this year's conservative growth estimate could well be surpassed.
"We always keep (our estimate) at a conservative level, we're saying about 3%. My sense is - based on advance bookings with the winter ski market - my personal feeling is that we're going to outpace what we did last quarter, because of the strong growth in the winter market," he said.
"We've seen additional service into Vancouver, when we have Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne all flying now into Vancouver. Melbourne's been added this year, and that just bodes well for us."