Federal taxpayers will shell out $43.3 million to improve the Memphis International Airport, despite reports traffic has fallen dramatically in recent years. U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, announced the funding, which came from the Federal Aviation Administration. Exactly $28.5 million of that will reimburse airport officials for reconstructing two taxiways. The remaining $14.7 million, meanwhile, goes to what Cohen called “the rehabilitation of the Memphis International Airport’s Concourse B.” Northwest Airlines was once the airport’s most dominant carrier. Then Delta gobbled it up. Delta decided it only needed one hub in the South, in Atlanta. That decision cost Memphis almost two-thirds of its passengers, according to a recent New York Times story. The result — three concourses are left and most of its gates are unused. Airports officials will spend $219 million to close and renovate Concourse B and mothball concourses A & C. No one at Cohen’s office returned requests for comment Wednesday. Memphis International Airport spokesman Glen Thomas, in an emailed statement, said the airport qualified for the federal funding, even though it might seem like a ghost town. These funds, Thomas said, involved federal Airport Improvement Program money. Under federal law the aviation system generates that money.…
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