Washington, DC – Congressman Bill Shuster, as part of the fight to retain funding for Blair County Airport, sent a letter today to the chairmen and ranking members of the appropriations subcommittees with jurisdiction.  The letter strongly urges their support for a one-year extension to the Virtual Primary Airport Program (VPA).  The bill has passed the House and Senate and is heading to a conference to work out the differences.  The extension is included in the Senate bill.  Congressman Shuster took a leading role in the House to ensure the extension is in the final bill and garnered the support of 18 of his congressional colleagues, who cosigned his letter.

“As Members that represent regional airports across the country, we respectfully request your support during the [appropriations] conference for the Senate language which provides for the extension of the Virtual Primary Airport Program for an additional year,” Shuster and his colleagues wrote in the letter.

“While passengers are coming back to airline travel at levels close to pre-9/11 numbers, many of the small regional community airports have not yet fully recovered and have not yet experienced passengers coming back at the same levels prior to the terrorist attacks.  Without an extension of the program, approximately 55 community airports across the country will lose $850,000 each in funding that is vital to safety and capital improvements…Many of these airports will have to put projects on hold midstream or abandon projects that are important for the safety and economic vitality of the airports and the airline carriers that utilize them.  We strongly urge your support for the Senate language to extend for one additional year the Virtual Primary Airport Program,” the letter adds.

Blair County Airport is an integral part of the area and the economy, but it is in jeopardy of losing some of its federal funding for next year and possibly beyond.  After 9/11 many small airports saw a drop-off in passengers, which would have resulted in a loss of funding.  Congress, with Shuster’s support on the Transportation Committee in 2003, instituted a temporary safety net – the Virtual Primary Airport Program – providing funding to the airports, including Blair County, that met the 10,000 target in years prior to the 9/11 attacks.  The well-known scheduled completion for the VPA provision is 2005.

Last month, with Shuster’s encouragement and the support of Senators Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum, language was added to an appropriations bill to extend VPA for one additional year.  This would remove the eminent loss of funding for this coming year.  However, this bill is not finalized.  Congressman Shuster’s letter encourages extending VPA for one additional year.