The FAA Just Sent Out the Last Airport Grants From a $14.5 Billion Program

On August 4, 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration announced 339 grants worth roughly $870 million to airports across 44 US states and territories. It is an ordinary-looking batch of runway and terminal money with one unusual feature: it comes out of the fifth and final installment of a program that stops issuing new money at the end of next month.

The awards were reported by Flying Magazine, which noted the round was the eighth set of airports funded in fiscal 2026. Los Angeles International was among the recipients.

What the Money Buys

The grants come from the Airport Infrastructure Grants program, or AIG, which the FAA describes as covering runways, taxiways, safety and sustainability work, terminals, and airport roadway and transit connections. That is a deliberately wide list.

What separates AIG from the FAA’s older grant channels is how the money moves. AIG is distributed by formula to every airport in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems, rather than being competed for project by project.

That is why a single announcement can carry 339 separate grants at once, and why the list mixes a hub like Los Angeles International with small general aviation fields that would rarely win a competitive federal award. The NPIAS covers roughly 3,300 public-use facilities across every category of airport in the country.

Why This Round Is the Last One

AIG was created by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed in November 2021, which authorized $15 billion for airport infrastructure over five years. About $14.5 billion of that reaches airports as grants, released in annual tranches of roughly $2.89 billion.

Fiscal 2026 is the fifth tranche, and there is no sixth. The American Association of Airport Executives told its members that the FY26 allocation represents the final year of AIG funding. New AIG allocations stop when the fiscal year closes on September 30, 2026.

After that, federal capital support for airports falls back to the Airport Improvement Program, the long-running channel funded from aviation taxes at a baseline in the region of $4 billion a year. For five years, AIG has been sitting on top of that baseline. Next year it will not be.

The practical squeeze lands on airports that sized their capital plans around the larger post-2021 number. A terminal or airfield project scoped when federal support covered a big share of the cost has to close that gap somewhere once the supplemental money is gone.

The usual answers are municipal bonds, passenger facility charges, and airline-backed lease agreements, all of which cost more than a grant. Construction costs have also risen sharply since the program was written in 2021, so the same dollar figure buys noticeably less concrete than it did when the law passed.

Larger airports have already been leaning on that private financing model rather than waiting for Washington. Melbourne Airport’s terminal and runway deal with Qantas is one version of it, and US hubs with strong airline partners have similar options. Small regional fields, which have no such leverage, are the ones for which the formula grant was doing the heaviest lifting.

None of this is a surprise to the industry. The end date was written into the law five years ago, and airport finance teams have been modeling the drop for years. It is still the largest single change to US airport funding since the program began, and it takes effect in under two months.