The U.S. Department of Transportation is making nearly $2 billion in federal grant funding available to help airports affected by COVID-19 under the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Airport Coronavirus Response Grant Program.
“President Biden has made it a priority to deliver immediate relief to our transportation sectors and their workers, ensuring they can continue to provide essential services through this pandemic and beyond” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
“Today’s announcement is one of many steps we are taking to protect the health of America’s travelers and workers, while keeping our nation’s airport operations and related small businesses up and running.”
The program is funded under the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2020. It is available to more than 3,000 commercial service, reliever and publically owned general-aviation airports in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems.
Most of the funds will go toward helping keep people safe and in jobs by reimbursing operational expenses, debt service payments and costs related to combating the spread of pathogens at the airport. The program also includes money for rent relief to airport concessions and to support FAA contract towers for items such as cleaning and sanitizing facilities affected by COVID-19 cases.
Under this new Airport Coronavirus Response Grant Program:
- Primary commercial service airports, those with more than 10,000 annual passenger boardings, will share $1.75 billion based on the number of annual boardings, in a similar way to how they currently receive Airport Improvement Program (AIP) entitlement funds.
- Primary commercial service airports will share an additional $200 million based on the number of annual boardings, and these funds will then be available for these airports to provide relief from rent and minimum annual guarantees to on-airport car rental, on-airport parking, and in-terminal airport concessions. Airports will provide this relief to each airport concession based on its proportional share of the total annual rent and minimum annual guarantees for the airport.
- Non-primary commercial service and general aviation airports will share $45 million based on their airport categories, such as National, Regional, Local, and Basic. Of that $45 million, airports that participate in the FAA Contract Tower Program will divide $5 million equally.
These funds will provide economic relief to airports around the country affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Airports must apply for the grants by June 30, 2021.
