Funding for a program subsidizing rural air travel is set to continue through early November despite the ongoing government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Transportation told airlines on Wednesday.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday that funding for the Essential Air Service program, the source of the subsidy, could lapse as soon as Oct. 12. That date has now been pushed back to Nov. 2, according to notice to air carriers from Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Daniel Edwards.
“Air carriers must continue to fulfill their obligations under existing contracts unless or until the Department notifies air carriers otherwise,” the document reads.
Essential Air Service subsidies are meant to ensure small communities have access to air travel, even if commercial flights aren’t necessarily profitable. The program supports more than 170 routes in 34 states and Puerto Rico with grants that total nearly $600 million a year, according to an October report from the Transportation Department.
That includes 65 Alaska communities at a cost of $41.7 million per year, most of which are not connected to the road system.
“Of all of the Essential Air Service communities around the country, we are the ones that really define what it means when we say essential,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said on the call-in program Talk of Alaska on Tuesday.
The extended deadline is a relief to airlines serving the state, Alaska Air Carriers Association head Will Day said in an interview.
“That's hopeful, from an industry perspective. It gives time for the government to recover and appropriate those funds,” he said. “We're cautiously hopeful that funding will be restored before Nov. 2, and business continues as usual.”
Even if funding does run out, some airlines serving Alaska communities say they’re not expecting disruptions, at least in the short term. But the impacts would be uneven, Day said.
Smaller airlines would face an especially difficult path forward. Day said a small carrier serving the Interior community of McGrath would be forced to nearly quadruple its fares for a one-way flight to or from Anchorage.
Alaska Airlines, which receives about 40% of the state’s total subsidy for routes serving Adak, Cordova, Yakutat, Gustavus, Petersburg and Wrangell, said Essential Air Service funding is “necessary to maintain this vital community service” in a statement from spokesperson Tim Thompson.
But flights would continue even if funding lapsed, he said.
“Despite this potential uncertainty, Alaska Airlines currently plans to continue operating reliable flights as scheduled while the federal government works to resolve the shutdown,” Thompson said.
In Southeast Alaska, Alaska Seaplanes Marketing Manager Andy Kline said the subsidies helped keep fares down but made up a relatively small portion of the smaller carrier’s overall revenue. The company receives some $2.1 million per year for routes from Juneau to Angoon, Kake, Tenakee Springs, Elfin Cove and Pelican.
“We are ‘steady as she goes’ with all of our regular deliveries and will be that way for the foreseeable future,” Kline said in an email.
Island Air Service, which receives $1.3 million yearly to operate 13 Essential Air Service routes from Kodiak, also plans to continue flying as scheduled through at least mid-November, co-owner and operations director Erik Howard said in an interview.
“We're going to do our best to just kind of keep providing service to the Essential Air Service communities as best we can uninterrupted, and hopefully the government figures it out,” he said. “But if it does go more than a month, then we might have to reevaluate and see from there.”
The state’s second-largest Essential Air Service carrier, Grant Aviation, offered support for the program and said it was advocating for funding to be restored but did not say whether passengers should expect disruptions.
Day, with the Alaska Air Carriers Association, said he hoped the shutdown would be resolved ahead of the early November deadline.
“At this time, we're just paying a lot of attention and hoping that things get resolved quickly,” he said. “Towards the end of the month, we'll start to be more concerned.”
Democrats and Republicans each blame each other for the shutdown, which shows little sign of resolving anytime soon.
Republicans need 60 votes to pass a government funding bill through the Senate, which requires support from some Democrats. Democrats, meanwhile, have said they are not willing to end the shutdown without an extension to expiring health care subsidies, a rollback of some health care cuts included in President Donald Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and limits on the president’s power.
Alaska’s lone U.S. House member, Republican Rep. Nick Begich III, said Democrats were holding programs like Essential Air Service “hostage” and that their demands amounted to a “$1.5 trillion-dollar partisan spending spree.”
“The stark reality here is that this shutdown didn’t have to happen,” Begich said in a statement. “Republicans passed a clean, responsible bill to keep the government open and ensure programs like EAS continue uninterrupted.”
Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan also blamed the shutdown on Democrats and said in a statement that he was “actively working with the Secretary of Transportation and his team to ensure funding disruptions are avoided if at all possible.”
“I’m also pressing more of my Senate Democratic colleagues to come to their senses and quickly pass our clean, bipartisan continuing resolution to reopen the government and safeguard these and other vital programs that millions of Americans rely upon,” he said.
Murkowski offered support for negotiations to end the shutdown.
“We're trying to figure out, can we get this off of dead center? Because there is no win, in my view, for either side. There is no win for anybody in a government shutdown,” she said.
Alaska Desk reporter Avery Ellfeldt contributed reporting.
Editor’s note: The graphics in this story were generated using an AI tool and verified by an editor and reporter. Alaska Public Media’s news team follows NPR’s ethics policy. You can find their AI section here.
