Atlanta Airport Taps Munis for $1.1 Billion Mega Bond Sale

The world’s busiest airport is coming to market with a more than $1 billion municipal bond sale, boosting issuance in the lagging airport sector.

Atlanta’s borrowing will help finance infrastructure improvements at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, a cornerstone hub for Delta Air Lines, Inc. The city plans to issue about $699 million of bonds subject to the alternative-minimum tax, and roughly $391 million of non-AMT bonds, according to bond documents.

The jumbo sale, expected to price Tuesday, comes as muni issuance in the airport sector hovers at roughly $10 billion so far this year, about 28% lower than at this point last year. In 2025, borrowers financed a slew of large airport projects at major hubs like Dallas, Chicago and Los Angeles. Those mega deals — at or above $1 billion each — made for a blockbuster year for airport issuance with nearly $24 billion sold.

“There aren’t very large projects and needs for capital financing at the moment, and so therefore they’re not in the frequency of issuing because they don’t need to,” said Andrew Clinton, chief executive officer of Clinton Investment Management, referring to airport infrastructure.

Muni bond sales hit roughly $570 billion in 2025, around 15% more than the year before, with a large portion pricing in the first half of the year as municipalities raced to sell debt to avoid any changes from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump last July.

“This rush was particularly acute for sectors exposed to potential changes in private activity bond rules, shifts in federal funding or alterations to the baseline municipal tax exemption — all areas where airport issuers were highly vulnerable,” said Matthew Gastall, head of municipal research and strategy for Bloomberg Intelligence. “Despite elevated fuel costs and broader economic headwinds, infrastructure investment across the airport sector remains exceptionally healthy.”

As for the Hartsfield-Jackson airport, it last tapped the muni market in September for around $1 billion to finance capital improvements and fund deposits to reserve accounts and construction funds. The airport, consistently ranked the world’s busiest by passenger traffic, is in the midst of a roughly $13 billion facelift to boost capacity and modernize infrastructure, according to bond documents.

For the latest sale, some of the bonds subject to AMT maturing in July 2036 are being offered to investors at a yield of 3.84% with a 5% coupon, according to preliminary pricing wires seen by Bloomberg. That’s about 60 basis points over the benchmark. Atlanta is designating two series of the issue as “green bonds,” according to bond documents.

Proceeds from this sale will finance an expansion of Concourse D, along with 24,000 square feet of additional Delta Sky Club space and a new parking deck. The upgrades come as the airport anticipates a 110% increase in enplaned passengers in 2033 compared to 2019, bond documents show.

The sale is being led by Bank of America Corp. and Siebert Williams Shank & Co., and the debt is rated AA+ by Kroll Bond Rating Agency and AA by S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings.

“Atlanta is a strong credit, it has strong fundamentals,” said Mohamed Balla, Atlanta’s chief financial officer. “It’s paper that institutional investors look for, and every deal that we’ve done has been oversubscribed three, four, five times.”

Courtney Knight, treasurer of the city of Atlanta, said the lack of Georgia paper of this size in the market will stir up investor demand. He anticipates interest from a broad cross-section of investors, including traditional municipal bond funds, exchange-traded funds, insurance companies and separately managed accounts.

The city’s growth has been a catalyst for expanding and modernizing the airport. Population growth in the Atlanta metro area has consistently outpaced the nation as a whole since 2007, according to bond documents. The region is also home to major employers, including United Parcel Service Inc. and The Coca-Cola Company.

Atlanta plans to take out an additional $3.7 billion of future debt to finance the airport’s capital plan, and anticipates coming back to the market three times through 2032, Balla said.

Photo: Travelers wait in line at a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in March. (Photographer: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg)

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