Las Vegas NowI-Team: Airport Money Handed Out Unevenly

I-Team: Airport Money Handed Out Unevenly

Airlines may be battling over fares during the recession, but passengers are simply worth more in Northern Nevada than in Las Vegas -- by nearly 147,000-percent.

A new study by the Pew Charitable Trusts examines Federal Aviation Administration grant spending during 2004 through September of 2009. The I-Team pored over those findings for Nevada and uncovered McCarran International Airport was given far less funding per passenger than other airfields in the state.

Marcus Peacock with Pew says the goal was to bring normally arcane and difficult figures to a broader audience. The hope is "[t]o see what airports are getting, how much money, when they got it, what kind of money they get and what they're spending it on," he said.

The I-Team compared three notable airports in Nevada -- Carson City, Reno/Tahoe International and McCarran. According to Pew, since 2004, the airports received:

Total Funding:

Carson:      $22,956,953
Reno:         $80,044,502
McCarran:  $87,664,218

Yet, the number of passengers, or enplanements, is vastly different.

Enplanements:

Carson:                     192
Reno:            12,020,088
McCarran:   106,924,121

McCarran received close to the same amount of grant funding as Reno, despite having nearly 10 times as many passengers. "This is not inconsistent with what we see elsewhere," Peacock said.

To put the numbers into perspective, the I-Team wanted to find how much money was spent per passenger, per capita at each of the airports.

Per capita funding: 

Carson:    $119,567.00
Reno:                  $6.65
McCarran:            $0.81

Carson City's airport receives 147,000-percent more funding per passenger than the sixth busiest airport in America -- McCarran.

There may be a reasonable explanation, however. Ian Gregor with the FAA says it is not bias or politics, smaller airports just need more help. "Sometimes we'll fund projects at airports that might not serve a lot of air traffic, but for example, are one of the key links between a remote community and the outside world," he said.

Often, the FAA decides on grants based on safety issues and weatherization. Gregor says even if a smaller airport services fewer passengers, safety issues trump plane loads. That could divert traffic elsewhere. "If we didn't keep smaller airports open and functioning, then their air traffic would end up in the busy commercial airports," Gregor said.

The FAA has come under fire because the Pew study also released ranking data for each project. The FAA uses an internal system called the National Priority Rating for projects. It is a zero to 100 system with 100 being a project in dire need of completion.

The I-Team compiled each project at the three airports, and found again, a large difference in usefulness of the projects.

National Priority Rating average:

Carson:       56.3
Reno:          67.8
McCarran:   68.0             

Some projects in Reno were desperately needed, including 97 rankings for new runway lights and construction of new safety areas. Others were not as important according the FAA's rankings. That included a 41 ranking for $430,481 for new equipment.

It's a similar situation for McCarran. The airport's plan for a new firefighting vehicle scored a 98, yet plans for construction on the apron of the facility only garnered a 42 ranking.

Yet Carson City averaged out to a 56 NPR ranking. None of the 10 projects scored above a 72 and those were for runway improvements.

Clark County Aviation Director Randall Walker says the I-Team's examination of the numbers does not reflect what is actually happening. He says the system is in place to balance out quality of airports in the entire country. Walker says federal funding is adequate. "Smaller airports, on a whole as a percentage, always get more money than large airports," he says.

McCarran is lucky, Walker says, because the airport has consistent sources of revenue through concessions and merchandise. Large airports also have another bow in the quiver, the passenger facility charge. This nominal fee is added to outbound flights and helps boost the bottom line for McCarran. In turn, McCarran and other airports with PFC's give up rights to some grants so they can go to smaller airfields.

"The small and medium sized airports need to have more help in order to be able to have the ability to provide services to their community," Walker says.

If you would like to research the study yourself, it can be found at http://subsidyscope.com/.

If you have any comments, questions or story ideas, email Jonathan at jhumbert@klastv.com or find him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jonhumbert