# Plain Language Summary: Rebuilding America's Airport Infrastructure Act

This bill increases the passenger facility charge—a small fee that airlines add to your ticket price to help fund airport improvements. Right now, airports can charge a maximum of $3 per passenger. This bill gradually raises that cap to help airports pay for repairs, renovations, and upgrades to terminals, runways, and other facilities.

Here's how the increase would work: Starting January 1, 2023, airports could charge up to $5.50 per passenger. The next year it goes to $6.50, then $7.50 in 2025, and finally $8.50 starting in 2026. After 2026, the fee would increase slightly each year to keep up with inflation. So if you're flying out of an airport that uses this fee, you'd see it added to your ticket price—meaning a typical round-trip flight could cost a few dollars more per person. However, not all airports currently use this charge, and individual airports decide whether to implement it and at what level (up to the maximum allowed).

The money collected goes directly to airport infrastructure projects. Airports use these funds to build new gates, improve baggage systems, upgrade terminals, fix runways, and make other improvements that benefit travelers. The bill essentially gives airports a larger funding tool to modernize aging infrastructure without relying solely on government grants or raising other fees. For travelers, the tradeoff is a modest increase in ticket costs in exchange for potentially better airport facilities and less congestion.

Rebuilding America’s Airport Infrastructure Act

Blumenauer, Earl

Rebuilding America's Airport Infrastructure Act This bill increases the cap on the airport passenger facility charge program of the Federal Aviation Administration. The program allows certain agencies to impose a passenger facility charge on each paying passenger of an air carrier or foreign air carrier boarding an aircraft at an airport the agency controls to finance an eligible airport-related project.