A key rescue buoy for rural communities, federal plane travel funds, will expire on Sunday if the closure continues
WASHINGTON – Federal financing of plane trips in rural areas will be exhausted on Sunday if the government closure continues, threatening to isolate distant communities across the country.
The Essential Air Service (EAS), created in 1978, provides funds to air carriers to operate from rural airports for routes which would be otherwise unprofitable. The program is a rescue buoy for distant communities because it connects them to cities with large airports, guaranteeing access to medical treatment, work opportunities and commercial goods which would otherwise be a long trip.
“The money is exhausted this Sunday. There are therefore many small communities across the country which will no longer have the resources to ensure that they have air service in their community,” said Secretary of Transport Sean Duffy on Monday at a press conference. “Each state across the country will be allocated by the inability to provide subsidies to airlines to serve these communities.”
EAS gives money to regional air carriers in 177 communities in the 50 states, as well as in Puerto Rico, according to Dot. The Regional Airline Association, a advocacy group for regional airlines that receive EAS funds, said that “the commercial airport airport service has had an economic impact of $ 2.3 billion and supported more than 17,000 American jobs” before the pandemic.
“This program is an essential economic rescue buoy for more than 500 rural communities which are often the hardest struck whenever there are disturbances in the national airspace system,” the association said in a press release. “”[We] Continue to urge the congress to come together and reopen the government for the good of the American public. The current government stop adds stressors to stress to an air transport system which is already in the grip of delays, disturbances and cancellations. »»
While the closure continues endlessly in view, the Federal Aviation Administration is already faced with shortages of staff and slight increases in sick calls while air controllers operate without salary. NBC News reported on Monday that no air traffic controllers was expected at Hollywood Burbank airport in the Los Angeles region for hours, and that the main airports in New Jersey and Denver have also experienced endowment problems.
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The congress assigned nearly $ 500 million to the EA in 2024; Expenditure is generally bipartite, serving rural communities in states across the country. However, earlier this year, President Donald Trump sought to reduce the program budget by $ 308 million in his discretionary budget. He had recommended to eliminate the program in its entirety in a budgetary plan during his first mandate.
Federal funding is particularly important for Alaska, where the hundreds of state islands and the vast tundra sides make air trips an air. According to a report by the Transport Department in October 2024, Alaska received more than $ 41 million in EAS grants. Duffy told journalists that “the number one user” in rural airspace is Alaska and that the state “will be affected” if the funding is exhausted.
“It is almost breathtaking, when you think of the implications for these communities, because there is no road for any of these places,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska said in NBC News on Monday. “It’s a big stressor right now.”
Murkowski said Alaska Airlines would keep the service in a handful of airports, regardless of EAS funding, but that it was worried about small carriers. She added that she was trying to contact Duffy. Alaska Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Meanwhile, the colleague of Murkowski, the senator from Alaska, the Republican Dan Sullivan, said that he was already in talks with the Secretary of Transport on the issue.
“We work there to make it have the least impact as possible. These are EAS subsidies, but it just goes to the whole of Schumer’s closure,” said Sullivan, referring to the nickname of the GOP for the closure, which, according to Les Républicains, was caused by the Democrats. “But at the moment, what I am trying to do is work with the transport secretary, with whom I was exchanging text messages and voice messages, to try to limit this kind of damage.”
Ryan Huotari, director of Sidney-Richland airport in Sidney, Montana, said the airport and its community depend on the financing of the EA.
“If EAS did not exist, I don’t think it could work,” said Huotari about the airport. “Our winters here are 20 people, they are quite treacherous. It’s quite frightening to drive here to Billings. I prefer to be on a plane at a car.”
Sidney is only an hour of Billings, the largest city in Montana, but it is about four hours on the way. Huotari says that the airport is crucial for people who cannot go back and forth of eight hours, like the elderly who need medical care in Billings, or oil workers who move between the two areas.
Huotari, who directed the airport at the last closure in 2018, said that he was used to EAS being on budgetary chopping but, without a solution to the congress in sight, this time he is worried.
“My biggest concern is to make people pay. There are a lot of federal subsidies that I have right now,” he said. “There is a lot of money hanging over there, as in the millions.”
