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New Jersey ranked dead last in Fiscal 2013 in airport project funding per passenger, according to an analysis by a group that lobbies for improvements to the region's major airports. A United jet is shown taking off from Newark Liberty International Airport in this Star-Ledger file photo.

(David Gard/Star-Ledger file photo)

New Jersey ranked dead last among the 50 states in terms of Federal Aviation Administration funding for airport projects per passenger in fiscal 2013, while New York was 46th, according to an analysis by a group that lobbies for improvements to the region’s three major airports.

In dollar terms, New Jersey airports, including Newark Liberty, Atlantic City International, Teterboro, received a total of $15,247,048 from the FAA’s Airport Improvement Program last year, or just 86 cents per passenger in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, said the Manhattan-based Global Gateway Alliance. New York, which includes John F. Kennedy International, LaGuardia, Stewart Airport, received $2.31 cents per passenger in AIP funds, the global group found.

In addition to shortchanging the three major airports that make up the nation’s busiest and most complex air space, the alliance said the distribution of federal airport project money was grossly out of proportion to passenger volumes across the country, depriving busy airports in favor of out-of-the-way landing strips with little traffic.

For example, the group pointed to a mandatory 35 percent set aside for airports that serve fewer than 10,000 passengers a year, which accounts for 0.25 percent of the nation’s fliers. The group found that New York and New Jersey airports received a total of $121 million in program funds for fiscal year 2013 and had 63.4 million departing passengers, while Delaware, Wyoming and Alaska received almost twice as much money — $216 million — while serving about 4.8 million passengers.

"When the federal government gives almost $1.5 billion to airports that serve less than one percent of the nation’s passengers, at the expense of New York and New Jersey, there is something seriously wrong," said Joe Sitt, chairman of the Global Gateway Alliance. "The funding must be fixed to focus on airports like ours that have real national significance."

Global released its analysis of federal airport grants after the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced a 10-year, $27.6 billion capital plan in February that includes billions of dollars in airport projects that will be financed mainly by lease payments from airlines and from ticket surcharges that, ultimately, will be borne by passengers.

The Port Authority issued a statement in support of the Airport Improvement Program, noting its importance to smaller airports that might not be able to afford badly needed projects. The agency also noted that the program provided $100 million for a runway rehabilitation project at JFK in 2010.

"Smaller airports help larger airports by handling general aviation flights and smaller commercial planes, reducing congestion," the Port Authority stated.

But the agency also reiterated its position that the FAA should raise the passenger facilities charge — a surcharge on each ticket to help pay for projects — from $4.50 to $8.

FAA officials say Sitt’s group presents an oversimplified and incomplete picture of federal airport funding, and insisted that a state-by-state comparison was "misleading," because airports often serve moe than one state, and program funds are awarded to airport operators, not to states.

The officials noted that there are two components of the Airport Improvement Program: entitlement funding, based on passenger volume; and discretionary funds, or grants to airports that apply for them.

Typically, the officials said, operators of larger, busier airports have the means to finance their own improvements related to their heavy volumes, including the passenger facilities charge, lease payments by airlines or rents paid by retailers inside terminals.

The reason that more than a third of program funds is set aside for small airports is to insure that, as part of an integrated national airport system, they are able to build and maintain facilities that meet federal aviation standards, even if those airports could not finance the improvements on their own.

"These smaller airports support non-commercial flight activity such as flight training, corporate and business aviation, agricultural support, law enforcement, aerial firefighting, emergency response and disaster recovery, aeromedical flights, and basic access for many remote communities," the FAA said in a statement. "Also, many larger commercial service airports have access to other capital funding sources such as Passenger Facility Charge (PFC) revenues and bond capital that smaller airports may not be able to access."

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