Accounting & Financing Working Group
The objective of the Accounting and Financing Working Group is to assist US and Canadian airports with accounting and financing matters and to identify, communicate and educate airports on:
- Accounting and financial reporting
- Financing market conditions and opportunities
- Regulatory compliance and professional standards
- Emerging issues and trends
- Related best practices
The working group seeks to accumulate, develop and share information through cooperation and coordination with other Finance Committee working groups, member airports, external agencies and subject matter experts. The goal is to provide accounting, financial reporting and financing resources, recommendations and advocacy on behalf of airports that provides input on, and influences positive outcomes for, proposed or realized changes that impact the airport industry.
Working Group 2022 Chair
Abel Palacios
Vice President, Finance
Dallas Fort Worth International Airport
- Continuously monitor topics at all stages of the GASB’s standard setting process in order to ensure timely communication to ACI-NA Finance Committee members, solicit input, and submit comment letters on issues of particular significance to airports.
- Provide 1 -2 continuing professional education opportunities during the year for ACI-NA Finance Committee members on upcoming GASB standards, implementation issues, CARES Act and Consolidated Appropriations Act compliance matters, as well as any other applicable training.
- Identify financing considerations related to environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics and include on the agenda for a conference or webinar during 2021.
- Identify COVID-19 recovery financing challenges and opportunities in collaboration with other working groups as deemed appropriate.
Airport & Airline Business Working Group
The purpose of the Airport and Airline Business Working Group is to survey business terms in current Airline Use Agreements and identify emerging trends and best practices to assist airports in negotiations and other discussions with airlines; catalogue expertise and experience as resources for other committees; collaborate with Airlines for America on issues of interest to both airlines and airports; and address other pertinent goals related to the various facets of airport and airline relationships. The Working Group emphasizes venues for direct dialogue with airline representatives.
Working Group 2022 Chair
Marge Basrai
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority
- Airline Agreement – emerging trends and best practices
- Defer Business Terms Survey until 2022
- Create and complete a new COVID-19 Survey to address more immediate issues. Target sending out survey in March/April 2021. Examples of information to gather:
- CARES Act/ACRGP Funds – how is it being used/over what time period?
- What part of your current airline agreement has worked well for the pandemic and what has been an issue? Is there an item that is no longer as valuable as it once was (i.e. – extraordinary protection coverage)?
- Innovative business practices that have been developed.
- Conduct a webinar on the results of the COVID-19 Survey
- Monitor how airports who have airline leases expiring are handling lease negotiations and maintain list of emerging trends. This will help structure goals and objectives for 2022.
- Organize the annual Airline Roundtable
- Session is normally held at the Business of Airports Conference. Monitor status of conference.
- Explore doing the Airline Roundtable as a series of webinars.
- Specific issues by type of Airline or size of Airport.
- Monitor and assess “hot issues” with Airlines that arise during the year.
- The monthly CFO calls can be used to identify issues that need to be addressed.
Financial Impacts of Federal Policy Working Group
The purpose of this working group is to work in conjunction with other ACI committees, and to address the potential financial impact to airports resulting from policies drafted by congressional legislation, FAA initiatives, Executive Orders, and other policy-making bodies.
Working Group 2022 Chair
Basil Dosunmu
Senior Vice President of Administration & Finance and Chief Financial Officer
Greenville-Spartanburg International Airpor
- Ensure active and regular engagement with ACI-NA Finance, Legal and Government Affairs teams to assist in needed areas, some of which include:
- Additional COVID relief
- Infrastructure Bill
- PFC Increase
- FAA Reauthorization – including engagement with FAA on implementation of certain provisions, e.g. PFC program streamlining
- Continue to advocate for improvements to the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program to make this program more accessible to the airport community.
- Develop, evaluate and advocate for more financing tools to the airport community to include but not limited to:
- Short-term credit facilities
- The concept of American Infrastructure and Recovery Bonds (AIR Bonds)
- Federal infrastructure bank
- Planning and coordinating with the Legal Committee on common topics for the annual ACI-NA conference
Membership Engagement Working Group
The purpose of this working group is to identify and implement membership outreach initiative. Working group membership includes officers and past chairs of this Committee. Efforts include phone calls and email communication to airports that have not been participating at the ACI-NA Business of Airports Conference, CFO Summit or any ACI-NA branded surveys, including the financial benchmarking survey and the business term survey, or airports that have newly appointed finance professional. This effort would help ensure that we engage as many airports as possible in the Committee projects and events.
Working Group 2022 Chair
Damian Brooke
Executive Vice President, Finance and Procurement
Tampa International Airport
- Use the ACI-NA member airport list to identify participation in the
- 2019 Business of Airports Conference
- 2020 CFO Summit
- financial benchmarking survey
- airport infrastructure needs survey
- Develop a priority list of airports with low or no participation. Reach out to these airports via email communication or phone calls.
- Update slides introducing the ACI-NA Finance Committee, its working groups, activities, and resources.
- Assign airports on the priority list to members of the working group to call or follow up with email to
- determine reasons for low participation
- identify improvements ACI-NA can make
- introduce committee
- Send out welcome letters to first time attendees of the Business of Airports Conference and/or the CFO Summit. Connect with first time attendees at the Conference to make them feel welcomed by the Committee.
- Above efforts would help ensure that we engage as many airports as possible in the Committee projects and events.
Strategic Planning and Performance Management Working Group
The purpose of this working group is to promote the implementation of best practices in strategic planning, continuous forecasting/budgeting, performance measurement, enterprise risk management, and benchmarking principles and techniques at airports; and to standardize, improve, and implement related industry surveys.
Working Group 2022 Chair
Rob Palmer
Vice President, Finance & CFO
YYC Calgary International Airport
- Conduct the ACI-NA Benchmarking Webinar for FY2019. Target March 2022.
- Conduct the ACI-NA Benchmarking Survey for FY2020.
- Launch the survey in January 2022.
- Increase the number of participants through direct contact with the target airports, working to increase participation of small and medium hub airports and regain the participation of airports that responded to the benchmarking surveys before 2016. Prepare a list of target airports, and assign outreach responsibility based on which committee member has the strongest existing relationship with a target airport.
- Continue to explore opportunities to transition the survey to web-based platform.
- Evaluate opportunities to integrate the ACI-NA survey with the Canadian Airport Information System.
- Conduct supplemental survey of post-pandemic recovery of projected operational and financial activity.
- Conduct ACI-NA Benchmarking Webinar with preliminary results from FY2020 Survey; and post-pandemic projection survey.
- Present the results of the latest available benchmarking survey at the ACI-NA Annual Conference in September.
Interested in joining a working group?
Working group participation is open only to ACI-NA members. If you are a member and are interested in joining one of the Finance Committee’s five working groups, please contact Liying Gu.
