A group of business, organization and government leaders recently sent a letter to congressional members in support of modernizing the Passenger Facility Charge (PFC) and urging passage of bipartisan legislation.
The PFC was established in 1990 as a local airport user fee that gives airports greater flexibility than Airport Improvement Program (AIP) grants. Initially, the PFC cap was set at $3, and large airports that charged the maximum were forced to forgo 50 percent of their AIP entitlement grants. In 2000, the cap was raised to $4.50, and airports were forced to forgo 75 percent of grants.
PFC funds are used for such projects as modernizing passenger terminals and adding gates while
AIP cannot be used by law for most passenger terminal projects or gate expansions at large airports. Grant funds generally are used for projects such as taxiways and runways.
“Limited gate access at hub airports has been estimated to raise consumer airfares by $5.72 billion in 2018 dollars each year, dwarfing total annual PFC collections of $3.51 billion in 2018,” the letter said.
The America: Rebuilding America’s Airport Infrastructure Act would eliminate the PFC cap and would require large airports charging more than $4.50 to forgo 100 percent of AIP grants.