The fiscal 2025 Transportation-HUD appropriations bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on July 25 would allow a total of $27.0 billion in total new funding for the Federal Aviation Administration in 2025, $1.9 billion more than last year and $236 million more than the House bill.

Operations. The big account is always Ops, which gets $13.603 billion in the bill, the exact amount of the budget request. This is an $874 million bump from last year and is $15.5 million more than the House bill.

Meeting the overall total in the budget request does not mean meeting all of the line-items. In fact, the Senate bill increases the Air Traffic Organization appropriation by $6.8 million over the request, and the Aviation Safety appropriation by $7.0 million, while cutting various overhead and other offices to match.

Highlights of the appropriation for Ops include:

• A $43 million increase for controller hiring, meeting the goal of 2,000 new controllers in FY 2025.
• $10 million above the budget request for aviation safety inspectors (54 more of them).
• $241 million to keep running the contract tower program, plus an additional $6.3 million for a pilot program to convert high activity air traffic control towers operating under the contract tower program to FAA staffed visual flight rules towers, as authorized under section 625 of the FAA Re- authorization Act of 2024.

FAA Capital Programs. The Senate bill provides an even $3.6 billion for Facilities and Equipment, $409 million more than last year and $51 million more than the House bill. This is in addition to $1.0 billion of advance appropriations provided by the IIJA. As with Operations, this is the same overall total as the budget request, with the only difference at the program-project-activity level being a $3 million increase in ATC F&E and corresponding decrease in engineering, development, and testing.

The Research, Engineering, & Development account has $40 million more than the budget request, and the big difference is an extra $22.9 million for aviation grant management, as called for by the new FAA reauthorization law. The Senate bill also pluses up info-cybersecurity by $15.1 million and advanced materials strategy by $12.5 million.

Airport grants. The Senate bill, like the House bill, provides an even $4.0 billion obligation on the Airport Improvement Program, matching the increase from $3.35 billion to $4.0 billion per year authorized by the recent FAA reauthorization law. When combined with the IIJA advance appropriation and the extra general fund money appropriated by this bill, the total amount of grants supported by the regular program this year will be $6.90 billion, $811 million more than last year and $228 million more than the House bill.

The Senate bill also earmarks $221.2 million in additional FAA airport appropriations for special projects directed by Senators. After the oversight set-aside and the predictable airport tech, airport research, and Small Community Air Service set-asides ($43.4 million, $15 million, and $15 million for those last three, respectively), there is something new and unusual: $68.8 million in the Senaet bill for a new PFAS replacement program, under section 767 of the new FAA reauthorization law.

The Senate bill does not amend the $1 billion in IIJA advances for the Airport Terminal Program fo4 2025.