This is the last of it.
The FAA awarded $870 million in Airport Infrastructure Grants across 339 projects at airports in 44 states and two territories. The money comes from the fifth and final $2.89 billion installment of the agency’s $14.5 billion Airport Infrastructure Grants program, established by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2022. That tranche closes out the program’s authorized funding.
Where the $870 million went
The largest single award is $289 million to Los Angeles International Airport for a new terminal access road. Miami International received $50 million to reconstruct its terminal roof. Below those, the distribution is granular and unglamorous: $9.1 million to Akron-Canton Airport in Ohio to rehabilitate passenger bridges and reconstruct facilities, $4.2 million to Juneau International in Alaska for snow removal equipment replacement, $3.7 million to Charleston International in South Carolina for terminal expansion, $3.5 million to Sugar Land Regional in Texas for runway reconstruction.
Eligible scopes cover airport planning, terminal improvements, baggage handling systems, runway and taxiway rehabilitation, roadway and access upgrades, and safety infrastructure. The grants go to airport sponsors rather than to builders, so no contractors are named in the award list.
The end of a five-year certainty
Aviation has been one of the few markets contractors could count on through a soft nonresidential cycle. A meaningful slice of that certainty came from a five-year federal program that has now paid its final installment, and no successor has been authorized.
The practical question for anybody chasing airport work in 2027 is blunt: what does the funding stack look like without AIG? Sponsors with a diversified capital base will answer it easily. Airport revenue bonds, passenger facility charges and state aviation funds all still exist, and the larger hubs lean on them already. Smaller sponsors that used AIG as the equity in their capital plan will have a harder time, and their programs are the ones most likely to be renderings rather than projects.
The larger programs already running on non-federal money show what that looks like. The Port of Seattle authorized $1.1 billion for its S Concourse Evolution in August, funded from the Airport Development Fund and future revenue bonds rather than tax dollars, on a project estimated at $2.5 billion in total.
The wider federal picture
AIG isn’t expiring in isolation. Combined with proposed transit and passenger rail reductions in the current stopgap negotiations, the federal transportation picture for 2027 looks materially thinner than 2026 did across several modes at once.
One caveat on the framing above. The characterization that this closes out AIG rests on the FAA’s own “fifth and final installment” language, and the absence of a successor program is an observation about what has been authorized so far, not a forecast. Congress can and often does authorize aviation funding late.
Source: Federal Aviation Administration. Additional coverage at AASHTO Journal.