Big or Little Airports?

If the U.S. spends $500,000,000 on airports, how should the money be spent? Last week the Civil Aeronautics Administration, which expects to spend that much on the seven-year Federal Aid Airport Program, told how it hoped to do the job.

CAA raised the hackles of big-city mayors two months ago by proposing to bear half the cost of all airport projects up to $2,000,000. For bigger projects, CAA would scale down its help below the 50%. CAA thought that what the U.S. needed was more smaller airports to boost private flying. But big-city mayors, led by Chicago's Ed Kelly, argued with a great deal of truth that what the country needed was bigger & better airline terminals to relieve dangerous congestion at existing airports.

In its final regulations, announced last week, CAA gave way a little. It agreed to pay half the cost of projects up to $5,000,000. The Federal share will then decrease 5% for each additional $1,000,000, down to a minimum contribution of 20%. Despite this change, $36,000,000 of the $45,000,000 which CAA has to spend this fiscal year will be spent on 800 small airports. Reason: CAA's proposed expenditures on larger projects must be submitted to Congress two months before the beginning of the fiscal year--and the Federal Airport Act was passed too late for CAA to comply this year. It looked as if nothing much would be done about dangerously overcrowded commercial airports for another year.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.