AASHTO Journal - AASHTO Holds Spring 2025 Aviation Roundtable

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials recently held a half-day meeting at the end of February to cover a wide range of aviation-related topics, from multimodal freight efforts to electrification and extreme weather resilience planning.

[Above image by AASHTO]

This meeting was hosted by the National Association of State Aviation Officials (NASAO) as a part of their three-day 2025 Washington Conference held in Washington, D.C.

Paul Feldman, vice president of government affairs with the General Aviation Manufacturing Association or GAMA, discussed the recent release of an updated national study detailing the “robust contributions” of general aviation to the U.S. economy.

That study – conducted by PwC US Tax LLP on behalf of NASAO and GAMA alongside with six other aviation groups – determined that general aviation supports more than 1.3 million jobs and a total of $339.2 billion in total U.S. economic output. It builds on a similar joint report compiled and released with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials in April 2023.

GAMA’s Feldman also highlighted how FAA reauthorization provides a foundation for the continued integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) technologies.

Tony McCloskey – director of the Bureau of Aviation within the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and vice chair of AASHTO’s Council on Aviation – facilitated an open discussion with attendees on extreme weather resilience planning, which included how drones can assist in recovery efforts through increased connectivity to deliver vital supplies, more efficient disaster assessment, and enhanced search and rescue operations.

McCloskey’s discussion session also reviewed how state DOTs are working to ensure that airports are prepared for extreme weather events.

[Editor’s note: several state departments of transportation are involved in a broad effort to test drones in a variety of disaster/emergency response scenarios. For example, in 2023, the Georgia Department of Transportation, The Ray – a nonprofit venture devoted to roadway technology testing – local Georgia officials, and drone-maker Skydio began collaborating to develop what they describe as a “drone as a first responder” or DFR program along a stretch of I-85. Also in 2023, the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities launched the Alaska Rural Remote Operations Work Plan or ARROW program, which uses drones to greatly improve emergency response capabilities in rural Alaskan communities.]

Bryan Budds – director of the Office of Aeronautics for the Michigan Department of Transportation and convener of the AASHTO Unmanned Aircraft System/Advanced Air Mobility UAS AAM Inter-Committee Working Group – provided updates on some of AASHTO’s recent UAS AAM activity, including a debrief of a knowledge session and Council on Aviation meeting focused on emerging technology, both held at the AASHTO 2024 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia last November.

Josh Rodriguez, AASHTO’s program director for environment, provided an overview of some of the electric charging solutions and strategies to support electrification across the U.S.’s multimodal transportation system. He also highlighted existing federal programs that may be used to support electrification activities at airports, various resources to guide those efforts, and the role that public-private partnerships can play.

Marty Blake – multimodal division director for the Indiana Department of Transportation – and Emi Carbray, AASHTO’s program manager for operations policy, provided a debrief of the AASHTO Multimodal Director Roundtable held at the AASHTO 2025 Washington Briefing in Washington, D.C. during the first week of February. Blake provided an aviation-focused perspective on the issues discussed at the roundtable while Carbray shared the overall transportation takeaways from that Washington Briefing meeting.

Finally, Paul Baumer – acting deputy director of the Office of Multimodal Freight Infrastructure and Policy within the U.S. Department of Transportation, reviewed the draft of the agency’s multimodal freight network issued in January (to which AASHTO provided feedback in late February) while outlining aviation’s present and future role within the nation’s multimodal freight system as a part of that discussion.