Funding for commercial flights to small airports around the country, including to three communities in Illinois, could be reduced under President Donald Trump’s budget proposal.

Congress is evaluating the budget proposal, which calls for reducing funding for the Essential Air Service program at the U.S. Department of Transportation by $372 million. The program, which subsidizes flights to rural areas and small cities throughout the country, costs about $633.5 million annually as of May 1, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s annual report.

Current funding includes $18.7 million for commercial flights from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to Decatur, Quincy and Marion — airports that otherwise would not have commercial aviation without the EAS program. It’s early in the budgeting process, so implementation dates and the amount of cuts, if any are approved, are subject to change.

Doug Kimmel, director of Veterans Airport in Marion, said the connection that air service provides is critical to the region.

“If it wasn’t for our ability to maintain service currently with that federal subsidy, access to southern Illinois via the national or even international air transportation system would be a car ride from Missouri or Indiana and Tennessee,” Kimmel said in an interview. “And that’s not what anybody in Illinois wants to try to tout as a means of not only retaining existing business and industry but attracting others as well.”

The program was established in 1978, when Congress passed legislation deregulating the airline industry, and large airlines expanded service to other destinations. Nearly 180 communities are served by a commercial airline under the program, including 65 in deeply rural Alaska. The airlines typically fly smaller aircraft on two round-trip flights per day from larger hubs like O’Hare to provide the service.

Airlines that provide the routes receive an annual subsidy from the federal government that creates a 5% profit margin. The subsidies make up the difference between the revenue the airline generates from ticket sales and the operating cost of the route. Given the lower volume of passengers using the flight service from the smaller communities, the routes would not be profitable without the subsidy, meaning airlines would likely not offer them.

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In addition to the three Illinois cities that are part of the EAS program, travelers from 16 other cities generally throughout the Midwest can fly to O’Hare on a federally funded route.

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Trump’s proposal

The president’s federal fiscal year 2027 budget proposal, authored by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, says the program is paying for “half empty flights from airports that are within easy commuting distance from each other” while spending on it is “out of control,” having doubled since 2021.

The proposal says funding will be reduced through unspecified changes to community eligibility and subsidy rates that will make it more sustainable to continue.

“This is a budget that does reflect our desire to have efficiencies brought into it, but we do not want to see communities cut off from air travel,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told a Senate appropriations committee in May.

Duffy said the program’s continued funding and operation during the record government shutdown last year shows the Trump administration’s commitment to keeping it running.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, chairs the appropriations committee. She’s a key vote in the Senate and is one of the top targets for Democrats hoping to retake control of the Senate in November. She told Duffy in May she is “very concerned” about Trump’s proposal.

“The Essential Air Service program is truly a lifeline to rural communities across the country, helping to connect them to national and global transportation networks, as well as to critical services,” Collins said in the committee.

Southern Illinois’ connection

At Marion’s airport near the state’s southern border, Kimmel said he doesn’t expect any airlines to continue service to southern Illinois without EAS.

“Effectively, we would become a general aviation airport, and jobs would be lost here at the airport, but not the least of which is going to be the effect throughout our region economically,” Kimmel said.

Marion is starting a new agreement with American Airlines on Aug. 1 to provide 12 round-trip flights each week to O’Hare. American is replacing Contour Airlines, which offered flights from O’Hare and Nashville since August 2023. American is set to receive about $6 million each year from the federal government to operate the route through July 2028.

American will also be using a larger 65-seat plane, doubling the number of possible passengers from Contour’s 30-seat aircraft. Even with the larger plane, American submitted the cheapest of four competing bids and was the preferred choice by local officials in the region.

“We are probably the poster child for the potential success that EAS can have for a community with the fact that we are preparing to see service from a mainline carrier with an aircraft more than twice the size of what we have now,” Kimmel said.

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Kimmel said Marion has seen increases in the number of passengers under Contour’s contract. He said passengers choose to fly from Marion to save time, even though it often costs more than using a higher traffic airport.

“It’s the efficiencies that this type of service provides that people realize,” Kimmel said. “To have the option of that connectivity and that efficiency of travel is important and people just want to be able to take advantage of that.”

If Congress significantly reduced funding for the EAS program, Kimmel said the risk to Marion’s flight program would depend on how the federal government implements changes, but he expects many communities would lose flights or see schedules reduced.

Decatur

Decatur’s population of 70,000 is situated 45 minutes between Springfield and Champaign, which each have airports that offer more regular commercial service. But the city is also home to one of the largest agricultural businesses in the country, Archer-Daniels-Midland Co.

“Transportation is everything,” Decatur Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe said in an interview. “People expect to be able to get where they’re going quickly, to have the service be reliable and they want to get home.”

SkyWest, which markets their flights under the United Express banner, operates 12 round-trip flights each week from Decatur to O’Hare. The airline receives $6.4 million annually from the federal government as part of a four-year agreement that began in December 2024. SkyWest expects to move about 21,800 passengers each year. Decatur is required by law to have at least 10 people aboard every flight that departs the airport because it is less than 175 driving miles from the nearest large airport.

Convenience is one of the top selling points for Decatur’s airport, Moore Wolfe said; security takes just minutes to pass and the direct flights to Chicago cut down on driving time. She said she hopes the city will be able to keep its EAS designation if the federal government changes the program.

“It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it would hurt,” Moore Wolfe said of potentially losing the designation. “It’s a really well-used service, especially with the plane that we have at this time. It’s been a very successful program.”

Quincy

Quincy began a new $6.5 million agreement with Contour on May 1 to include flights to Nashville in addition to O’Hare. The airline’s original two-year agreement to provide service to the community with less than 40,000 residents began last November and runs through October 2027. Following the changes implemented in May, it now calls for Contour to operate five round-trip flights to Nashville and seven to O’Hare each week on a 30-passenger plane, serving more than 20,000 passengers annually.

Contour earned the winning bid because it uses smaller planes. Documents show Quincy’s airport would have to make $120,000 in upgrades to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration to accommodate larger planes used by SkyWest and Air Wisconsin, another partner of United.

In the federal order approving Contour’s bid, the DOT said it rejected Cape Air’s bid because of a history of problems with the airline, including unreliable small planes and trouble fulfilling the agreement. DOT said Cape canceled numerous flights to and from Quincy in 2022 over staffing issues.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.