University of Illinois Willard Airport — Savoy, United States

Aviation students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign train daily at CMI, a facility the university itself owns and operates, making it one of a small number of American airports run directly by a public university rather than a municipality or airport authority. The field is named for Arthur Cutts Willard, a former University of Illinois president, and technically sits in the village of Savoy just south of Champaign-Urbana. Beyond flight training, the airport offers limited scheduled commercial service connecting the Champaign-Urbana metro area, home to a major research university and a growing tech scene, with connecting hubs such as Chicago. General aviation, university research flights, and charter traffic round out an operation that stays modest in scale but plays an outsized role in the region's air connectivity given the absence of any larger commercial airport nearby.