FAA will not continue funding airport runway repairs

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to add context about the FAA’s position on the runway/taxiway separation. The AA has said multiple times that the airport must alleviate the modification of standard in order to continue receiving discretionary funds.

The runway pavement at the airport is years beyond its useful life. Surface-level repairs have kept it safe and operational, but the proverbial money pit extends deeper each year. And now, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said the funding tap will shut off in 2025.

Even with $6.5 million coming from the FAA this year and $12 million since 2021, the airport will be responsible for $1.5 million in unbudgeted repairs this year alone. And that cost burden is only expected to rise … now without the help of the FAA.

In an email to Aspen/Pitkin County Airport Director Dan Bartholomew, FAA Denver Airports District Office Manager John Bauer said the administration would not continue to fund piecemeal repairs of the runway. Instead, the airport would need to begin the overdue reconstruction of the runway to receive any more FAA funds.

“Starting in 2021, the FAA has (helped) maintain the existing runway and taxiway pavement with 4 grants totaling over $12M with an additional grant anticipated this year estimated at $6.5M,” Bauer wrote in the email. “With the expenditure of $18.5M on runway maintenance, we will not invest additional funding to maintain the existing runway and taxiway pavement; the next FAA investment will be to reconstruct the runway in the location shown on the approved ALP.”

An Airport Layout Plan (ALP) is like a master planning document for airports, covering both the land and air sides of the facilities. It’s the document on which the FAA bases major funding allocations.

The Aspen airport has a current, accepted ALP on file with the FAA. Among many other details, it dictates that the runway will shift 80 feet west to achieve a full 400-foot separation between the runway and taxiway. 

Currently, the separation is only 320 feet wide, which limits aircraft that can use the Aspen airport. The FAA has insisted multiple times – once in front of the Pitkin County commissioners and the Airport Advisory Board (AAB) – that the airport must widen its separation to allow aircraft with wingspans up to 118 feet, not just 95 feet, to use the airport, as dictated by the airport’s FAA design group standards in order to continue to receive discretionary funding.

That funding could number in the hundreds of millions of dollars as the airport pursues crucial runway and terminal renovation projects.

The prospect of planes with wider wingspans being allowed to land at the airport set off a tidal wave of public concern. The county formed the Visioning Committee, which laid out community goals by authoring the Common Ground Recommendations. Then came the Airport Advisory Board.

All of that, which played out within the last 10 or so years, delayed critical subsurface pavement renovations that should have happened years ago. The repairs to the pavement have been like bandaids, penetrating only a few inches when the issues, which are seemingly due to wet ground, are many feet below the blacktop. Bartholomew has estimated the total reconstruction cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Pitkin County (as the airport’s sponsor), airport staff, and consultants have been working with the FAA for years to translate the Common Ground Recommendations into a new ALP, with a taxiway shift instead of a runway shift to compromise on some community goals. That ALP is still a work in progress and may be ready within the year. 

But the pavement funding from the FAA is over until the county and airport can decide which ALP they want the FAA to use.

Why would the FAA pull the funding?

The FAA doles out entitlement and discretionary funds to airports every year. Entitlement funds are uniform and based on traffic. Discretionary is subject to change based on airport needs, like pavement issues. 

Bauer’s email said that the FAA has spent $116.5M in federal grant funding since 1982 on the Aspen airport.

When the FAA issues grants to airports, those funds do not come without strings attached. The strings are called grant assurances, which hold the recipient of the funds to certain standards. Usually, they are safety and access-based, two of the FAA’s greatest concerns, but some are designed to protect the FAA’s financial investment. As Bartholomew put it at the February Airport Advisory Board meeting, the “FAA is unwilling to put good money after bad.”

In Aspen airport’s case, grant assurances 11, Pavement Preventive Maintenance-Management, and 19, Operation and Maintenance, apply. The fact that the federal grant-backed repairs are only lasting 1-3 years and not at least 10 is a problem, as well as endangering the “safe and serviceable condition” of the airport, according to the FAA.

Without the FAA funding, it has the power to force the airport and its sponsor, Pitkin County, to pay for the reconstruction themselves. 

“They won’t shut us down; they’ll force us to pay for it to keep it open. That’s the real thing: It’s not that they’re gonna allow us to shut down,” Bartholomew said. “(The FAA) is going to say, ‘You will find the money, and you will keep the airfield open. And you will pay for it yourself to make sure that happens.'”

Sara Ott, city of Aspen manager and Airport Advisory Board member, said that she’s seen the federal government exert its power in such a way and that it’s “very expensive” for the local community.