Getting from north Alabama to the Big Apple could get a bit easier for travelers if the feds come through for the Port of Huntsville.
The airport’s board of directors recently applied for a $1 million grant to help establish nonstop air service to the New York City market. Directors are seeking a share of this year’s Small Community Air Service Development Program funds, a U.S. Department of Transportation effort to help airports pay for solutions to self-identified air-service deficiencies.
The funds can be used to pay for programs like economic air service studies, revenue guarantees to air carriers that provide service, startup cost offsets and reimbursement of air carrier ground handling fees, according to the grant solicitation.
A spokesperson said the airport does not comment on pending grant applications.
Up to $12 million is available under the program this year. Last year, about $11.1 million was split among 20 airports under the grant program, including $365,000 to Gulfport/Biloxi International Airport in Mississippi “for a revenue guarantee and marketing to initiate and support new service to the Washington, DC area,” according to the DOT. That service has not yet begun.
Last year’s awards were announced in September.
The grant application aligns with the airport’s strategic plan for the 2025 fiscal year, which includes pursuing nonstop service to the New York City area with current carriers American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.
American and Delta have hubs at John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport in New York City, and they both fly to Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. United has a hub at Newark, where it is the largest carrier, and it also flies to LaGuardia.
HSV also recently secured $12.8 million under the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport Improvement Grant program, AL.com reported.
That funding is important to Huntsville International Airport, CEO Butch Roberts said this week, because “it enables us to maintain the standards we must meet every year to ensure the safety of our operations as well as provide the excellent customer service we are known for.”
According to Roberts, the funds will be used to mill and overlay the 10,000-foot East Runway, to relocate a taxiway connector and to replace runway edge lighting with energy-saving LED lighting.
In 2022, the FAA approved the airport’s East Runway to land the Dream Chaser commercial space plane, a descendant of the Space Shuttle under development by Sierra Space. The Dream Chaser will launch vertically on a rocket and land on a conventional runway.
Huntsville International Airport is one of three approved U.S. landing sites for the Dream Chaser, along with the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Spaceport America near the city of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Landing the Dream Chaser at HSV is among the airport’s goals for this fiscal year.
The first model of the Dream Chaser had been set to launch in September from Kennedy Space Center, but that flight – aboard a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur launch vehicle – has been delayed to allow ULA to complete its Vulcan certification with U.S. Space Force.
The space plane has been delivered to Florida for final testing and could still launch this year, company officials recently told TechCrunch, on its first of seven contracted missions to resupply the International Space Station. The first mission is scheduled to end with a landing at back at Kennedy Space Center.
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