Assistance program
Payments for Essential Air Services
$3.8 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of the Secretary, Transportation, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants;Direct Payments for Specified Use
- CFDA number
- 20.901
- What it does
- The program provides subsidies to air carriers to serve eligible communities as designated by Congress .
- Who benefits
- Air carriers and eligible local communities.
- Who applies
- Air carrier must be found fit and be selected by the Department to perform the subsidized service.
- Authorized by
- Airline Deregulation Act of 1978
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
How the money flows
Committed dollars by how this program's money is paid out.
Direct payments
$3.8B
100%
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments