Tucson airport wins $23M grant for major airfield project

Tucson International Airport has been awarded a federal grant of nearly $23 million to help fund the latest phase of its $350 million airfield-safety improvement project — the biggest construction program in the airport’s history.

The recently announced grant from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport Improvement Program, which is funded by passenger surcharges, includes $18 million in discretionary funding, in addition to what TIA is entitled to based on its passenger volume.

TIA’s Airfield Safety Enhancement project will replace the shorter, parallel runway to the main runway at TIA with a new, full-length parallel runway to handle commercial airliners, while reconfiguring taxiways for safer operations.

The latest grant will fund about 91% the total project cost of a phase of the airfield project that involves construction of new outer taxiways on TIA’s main airfield, Tucson Airport Authority spokeswoman Jessie Allen said.

TIA expects additional FAA grant funding to be announced between June and September that will support additional elements of the outer taxiway work, which will likely begin this fall and last 14 months, Allen said.

TIA broke ground on the airfield construction project in October 2020 and completed underground electrical work last year.

Another phase of airfield construction, the End-Around Taxiway project, started late last year and will be completed by January 2023, she said.

The new runway is expected to be finished by 2024, or 2025 depending on the pace of funding, airport officials say.

After that, the current main runway will be closed for construction and commercial traffic shifted to the new runway so work can proceed on new taxiways between runways, which will take another year or so.

TIA’s airfield project is being funded mainly with grants from the FAA, along with airport revenue and state grants.

TIA also is expected to receive about $31 million in increments of just over $6 million annually over five years from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was signed into law last November.