By law, Alaskan airports are entitled to receive at least the same amount of money that they received in 1980. General aviation airports are eligible to receive this money but they must be located in Alaska to qualify. The AIP discretionary fund is the AIP money that remains after all the entitlements and set-asides in law are funded. General aviation airports qualify for this money but the amount they get will vary from year to year depending on the FAA s judgment of the competing needs at the various airports. Other sources of capital Airports have other sources of infrastructure funding beside AIP grants.
Larger airports tend to get the bulk of their funding from bonds and PFCs.
General aviation airports do get some funding from their states. GAO reports that, excluding one airport with a large special facility bond, general aviation airports relied on AIP for more than half their capital funding. That bill takes the aviation trust fund off budget in order to unlock that fund and use the money for aviation infrastructure improvements as it was originally intended. One of the purposes of this hearing will be to hear from the FAA, general aviation airport users, state aviation directors, and individual general aviation airports, about the need for this money for general aviation airport infrastructure. There are basically three ways that a general aviation airport can acquire land with the help of the Federal government.