Airfield Pavement: Keeping Nation's Runways in Good Condition Could Require Substantially Higher Spending

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on runway conditions at national system airports and cost estimates for maintaining and rehabilitating these runways over the next 10 years, focusing on the: (1) current condition of the nation's airport runways; (2) likely cost of rehabilitation and preventive maintenance for these runways over the next 10 years; (3) Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) basis for setting priorities among requests for Airport Improvement Program (AIP) grants for runway rehabilitation and maintenance; and (4) results of the demonstration project authorized by Congress in 1996 to address concerns that a lack of funding was hampering runway maintenance at small airports.

GAO noted that: (1) most runway pavement is currently in generally good condition; (2) about three-fourths of the runways included in GAO's database on pavement condition were rated good to excellent, while one-fourth were rated fair to poor; (3) a statistical model predicted that most of the runways not in GAO's database were also in good to excellent condition; (4) however, in the next 10 years, many airports in GAO's database will face substantial work keeping runways in generally good condition; (5) FAA and pavement experts believe that the most economical way to lengthen pavement life at many airports is to rehabilitate runways when they are still in good condition; (6) waiting often increases costs because more expensive methods must be used; (7) the cost of keeping runways in generally good condition over the next 10 years will be beyond the average $162 million historically spent in the AIP for this purpose each year; (8) for the 35 percent of national system airports in its database, GAO estimated future costs in two ways; (9) assuming that airports could fund projects before runway pavement deterioration accelerated to the point at which more expensive approaches would have to be used, an estimated $1.38 billion would be needed at these airports over the next 10 years; (10) these airports could then choose a less expensive rehabilitation option, rather than a more costly reconstruction method; (11) assuming that these airports would have about $162 million per year in federal funds to spend, they would face an unmet need of $2.37 billion after 10 years, a higher amount than under the first estimate; (12) FAA's system for setting priorities among grant applications gives runway rehabilitation projects higher priority than most other projects; (13) however, FAA does not have an accurate, consistent source of information about detailed runway conditions at all airports in the national system to consider during this process; (14) for fiscal year (FY) 1997 and FY 1998, the states and local airport authorities have shown limited interest in participating in the pilot program authorized by Congress for pavement maintenance grants at nonprimary airports; (15) in FY 1997, FAA received expressions of interest from 14 airport owners and states that provide assistance to airports within their borders and awarded grants to 1 airport owner and 3 states; (16) six candidates expressed interest in participating in the second year of the program; and (17) a GAO survey of state aviation departments revealed no dominant reason for the limited amount of interest.