The Mobile International Airport will cost as much as $330 million and open at the end of 2025, Mobile Airport Authority President Chris Curry said during a meeting with the City Council on Tuesday, May 23.
Curry blamed inflation for the increase in the expected expense of the new airport at the Brookley Aeroplex. Originally, Curry said the design and construction was expected to cost $252 million, but has now jumped to $330 million.
MAA has secured about $230 million in funding for the new terminal and parking deck and he’s confident the group will secure all of the money needed for the project in the near future.
The funding sources Curry laid out during the discussion include $30 million from the city, $15 million from the county and $68 million in congressional funding from former Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby.
Funding also comes from several Federal Aviation Administration grants, including the competitive Military Airport Program and two grants related to annual enplanements, which has raised $3.6 million in previous years, but will drop after that because Frontier Airlines left the downtown airport.
“We will lose some of that because it’s based on 10,000 enplanements,” Curry told councilors.
The 2023 funding from the grant reflects enplanements from 2021, which was a year when Frontier brought more than 10,000 enplanements to the new airport. Since Frontier left, Brookley Field is expected to only be eligible for $150,000. Enplanements are expected to pick up again, Curry said, on May 31, when Avelo offers direct flights from Brookley to Orlando.
Counted among the funding sources is the $30 million promised from Gov. Kay Ivey, but cut from the Education Trust Fund budget. Curry said he was confident Ivey would stand by her “commitment” to the airport in another way.
“That was taken out by the Senate, but we believe there’s a commitment from the governor to fund the project,” he said.
With the anticipation of state money and a bit more than $1 million from MAA, the funding or promise of funding comes to about $260 million total, leaving only about $70 million unfunded.
As for Avelo, the first flights on the discount carrier are about 70 percent full, which Curry called “pretty good,” considering the tardiness of the announcement.
The new airport will consist of five gates, initially, with the opportunity to expand to 12, if legacy carriers decide to offer more destinations in the future, Curry said. Mobile Regional Airport currently consists of six gates with jetways and four without. The four gates without jetways are used for smaller, 50-seat regional jets, which Curry said the international airport won’t service those types of aircraft.
Dale Liesch is assistant managing editor and a reporter with Lagniappe. He can be reached at dale@lagniappemobile.com
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