As airport authorities develop capital programs to expand and modernize their facilities, they’re also faced with how to pay for these initiatives. The Federal Aviation Administration provides money for some infrastructure improvements, but not on the scale of the hundreds of millions it takes to build whole terminals. Out of the agency’s last round of almost $617 million in funding commitments, one of the largest was a total of $93 million in runway-related letters of intent and grants to Chicago’s O’Hare International.
