49 U.S.C. § 47102 — Definitions

(1) "Air carrier" has the meaning given in section 40102 — this section does not define it itself.

(2) "Airport" (A) means an area of land or water used, or meant to be used, for aircraft landing and takeoff; an area next to it used for airport buildings, facilities, or rights of way; and the buildings and facilities in those areas. (B) It also includes a heliport.

(3) "Airport development" means these activities, when done by a public-use airport's sponsor, owner, or operator:
(A) Building, repairing, or improving the airport — including removing, lowering, relocating, marking, and lighting airport hazards, preparing plans and doing field studies, and building a secondary runway at a nonhub airport that matches the primary runway in size and type.
(B) Buying or installing things at the airport: navigation aids like precision approach systems (i); safety and security equipment the Secretary requires or approves as significantly helping safety or security — including explosive detection devices, universal access systems, emergency call boxes, in-pavement runway and taxiway lighting, and other incursion-prevention devices (ii); snow-removal equipment, runway-friction measuring gear, or weather-reporting equipment — including closed-circuit weather cameras and, in Alaska, fuel systems for the snow equipment (iii); firefighting and rescue equipment, but only at airports with scheduled flights on aircraft built for more than 9 passengers (iv); aircraft deicing equipment and structures, but not the deicing fluid itself or storage for the fluid (v); interactive training systems (vi); FAA-certified windshear detection equipment (vii); FAA-approved stainless steel adjustable lighting extensions (viii); engineered materials arresting systems, as described in a specific 1998 FAA advisory circular and any later revision (ix); replacing baggage conveyor systems and reconfiguring terminal baggage areas, but only when needed to install bulk explosive detection devices, and only paid for with money apportioned under section 47114 (x); and a medium-intensity approach lighting system with runway alignment indicator lights (xi).
(C) Acquiring an interest in land or airspace — including land for future development — needed to do the work in (A) or (B), or to remove, reduce, or prevent an airport hazard.
(D) Buying land for, or building, a burn-area training structure (on or off the airport) so firefighting and rescue staff required to train can do live-fire drills, including basic equipment and minimum structures under FAA standards.
(E) Moving an air traffic control tower and any navigation aid, including radar, if needed for a project the Secretary approved under this subchapter or under section 40117.
(F) Building, rebuilding, repairing, or improving an airport, or buying capital equipment, needed to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Clean Air Act, or the Federal Water Pollution Control Act — except construction or equipment that would mainly benefit a revenue-producing area of the airport used by a nonaeronautical business.
(G) Buying land for, or building, a pad to deice aircraft before takeoff at a commercial service airport — including paving, drainage and treatment systems, lighting, paved vehicle access, and glycol recovery vehicles — but not the deicing fluid itself or storage facilities for deicing equipment or fluid.
(H) Routine work to keep runways, taxiways, and aprons usable longer, at nonhub airports and airports that aren't primary airports, under FAA guidelines.
(I) Building, rebuilding, or improving an airport, or buying non-revenue capital equipment the airport will own, to move passengers, cargo, or baggage between air and ground transportation on airport property.
(J) Building an air traffic control tower, or buying and installing control, communication, and related equipment at one, under the terms in section 47124(b)(4).
(K) Work to build or change airport facilities for low-emission fuel systems, gate electrification, and other air-quality improvements at a commercial service airport.
(L) A commercial service airport buying vehicles or ground support equipment with low-emission technology, if used only on airport property, or only to move passengers and employees between the airport and its consolidated rental-car facility or an intermodal surface transportation facility adjacent to the airport.
(M) Building mobile refueler parking inside a fuel farm at a nonprimary airport that meets a specific federal regulation (40 CFR 112.8).
(N) Terminal development, as covered under section 47119(a).
(O) Buying and installing equipment to give parked aircraft air conditioning, heating, or power from shared terminal-based facilities, to cut energy use or harmful emissions compared to aircraft doing this themselves.
(P) An on-airport project to make the power supply more reliable and efficient, meet current and future power demand, and prevent power disruptions to the airfield, terminal, and other facilities — including generators, renewable energy and storage infrastructure (and needed substation upgrades), separating the main and backup power supplies, building a microgrid (as a specific 2007 energy law defines it), and smart glass, including electrochromic glass.
(Q) Converting or retrofitting vehicles and ground equipment into eligible zero-emission vehicles and equipment (as section 47136 defines them), and buying or leasing such equipment.
(R) Early planning — including financial, legal, or procurement consulting — for an application, or planned application, for an exemption under section 47134.
(S) Buying advanced digital construction management systems and related technology for planning, designing, building, and maintaining airport facilities, when used for a project the Secretary approved under this subchapter.
(T) Improvements — or planning for them, including monitoring equipment or services — needed to keep or restart commercial flights after a natural disaster (the section lists: earthquake, flooding, high water, wildfire, hurricane, storm surge, tidal wave, tornado, tsunami, wind-driven water, sea level rise, tropical storm, cyclone, land instability, or winter storm) at a primary airport, or at a nonprimary airport FEMA has designated as a staging area or incident support base.
(U) A project to comply with airport cybersecurity rulemakings and recommendations from the rulemaking committee set up under the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024.
(V) Rebuilding or fixing an existing crosswind runway — no matter how much wind coverage the primary runway already has — if that work is in the airport's most recently approved layout plan.
(W) Building or acquiring airport-owned infrastructure or equipment, even if it could produce revenue, needed for (i) storing or distributing unleaded aviation gas for piston aircraft on airport property, including pipelines, storage tanks, low-emission fuel systems, and fuel trucks carrying only unleaded fuel (unless the Secretary allows a different fuel temporarily), or (ii) fueling systems for type certificated hydrogen-powered aircraft.
(X) Building, rebuilding, or fixing a taxiway or taxilane serving shared-use aeronautical facilities, including aircraft storage — except the 50 feet of pavement right in front of a building that is itself not eligible.
(Y) Any other activity, other than terminal development, that the Secretary decides will reasonably improve the airport's safety.

(4) "Airport hazard" means a structure, a naturally growing object, or a nearby land use that gets in the way of, or is dangerous to, aircraft landing at or taking off from a public-use airport.

(5) "Airport planning" means planning as the Secretary defines by regulation, including: (A) system-wide airport planning and catchment-area studies; (B) building an environmental management system; (C) a plan to recycle and cut airport solid waste, consistent with state and local recycling laws, including the cost of a waste audit; and (D) checking current and future electrical power needs for airside and landside activities.

(6) "Amount made available under section 48103" or "amount newly made available" means the amount Congress authorized for grants under section 48103, as later laws may limit it that year — not counting money recovered from cancelled grant obligations that year, or amounts covered by section 47107(f).

(7) "Commercial service airport" means a public airport in a state that the Secretary finds has at least 2,500 passenger boardings a year and gets scheduled passenger flights.

(8) "General aviation airport" means a public-use airport in a state that the Secretary finds either (A) has no scheduled service, or (B) has scheduled service with fewer than 2,500 passenger boardings a year.

(9) "Integrated airport system planning" means creating information and guidance to decide how much, what kind, where, and when airport development is needed in an area, to build a viable, balanced, connected system of public-use airports — including (A) identifying what the system needs; (B) estimating system-wide development costs; (C) studies and surveys, including on airport access, needed to decide which aeronautical needs the airport system should meet; and (D) state-set standards for development at nonprimary public-use airports, except standards for safety of approaches.

(10) "Landed weight" means the weight of aircraft carrying only cargo in intrastate, interstate, and foreign air transportation, as the Secretary determines by regulation.

(11) "Large hub airport" means a commercial service airport with at least 1.0 percent of the nation's passenger boardings.

(12) "Low-emission technology" means technology for vehicles and equipment with the best emissions performance achievable under EPA standards, that relies only on alternative fuels that are mostly non-petroleum, as the Department of Energy defines them — but this can still include hybrid systems or natural-gas vehicles.

(13) "Medium hub airport" means a commercial service airport with at least 0.25 percent but less than 1.0 percent of passenger boardings.

(14) "Nonhub airport" means a commercial service airport with less than 0.05 percent of passenger boardings.

(15) "Passenger boardings" (A) means, unless context says otherwise, revenue passenger boardings in the United States in the prior calendar year on an aircraft in air commerce, as the Secretary determines by regulation, and (B) includes passengers who stay on an international flight that stops at a U.S. airport — in the 48 contiguous states, Alaska, or Hawaii — for a non-traffic reason.

(16) "Primary airport" means a commercial service airport the Secretary finds has more than 10,000 passenger boardings a year.

(17) "Project" means a project, several projects combined in one grant application, or all the projects planned at an airport in a fiscal year, done to achieve airport development or airport planning.

(18) "Project cost" means a cost involved in carrying out a project.

(19) "Project grant" means money the Secretary grants to a sponsor to carry out at least one project.

(20) "Public agency" means (A) a state or a political subdivision of a state; (B) a tax-supported organization; (C) an Indian tribe or pueblo; or (D) the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, or the Republic of Palau.

(21) "Public airport" means an airport meant for public use that (A) a public agency controls, and (B) has publicly owned land where aircraft land, take off, or move on the ground.

(22) "Public-use airport" means (A) a public airport, or (B) a privately owned airport meant for public use that is either a reliever airport, or one the Secretary finds has at least 2,500 passenger boardings a year and scheduled passenger flights.

(23) "Reliever airport" means an airport the Secretary designates to ease congestion at a commercial service airport and give the community more general aviation access.

(24) "Revenue producing aeronautical support facilities" means fuel farms, hangar buildings, self-service credit-card fueling systems, airplane wash racks, major rehab of a sponsor-owned hangar, or other aeronautical facilities the Secretary decides will raise the airport's revenue.

(25) "Small hub airport" means a commercial service airport with at least 0.05 percent but less than 0.25 percent of passenger boardings.

(26) "Sponsor" means (A) a public agency that applies to the Secretary under this subchapter for financial help, or (B) a private owner of a public-use airport who applies to the Secretary under this subchapter for financial help for that airport.

(27) "State" means a U.S. state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, or Guam.

(28) "Terminal development" means (A) building an airport passenger terminal building, including terminal gates; access roads used only for airport traffic that lead directly to or from the terminal building; and walkways leading directly to or from the terminal building; and (B) the cost of a vehicle that moves passengers and baggage between terminal facilities, and between terminal facilities and aircraft.