A congressional feud that has partially shut down the Federal Aviation Administration has officials at the Monterey Peninsula Airport nervously watching the calendar.

The shutdown, which started Friday after Congress failed to approve a routine stop-gap funding measure amid partisan fighting, isn't affecting air travel, but it has furloughed thousands of workers and delayed major airport projects.

Last week, the Monterey airport district received contractor bids on a $40 million runway area safety project and hopes to award a contract and start construction this fall.

Airport district officials likely won't be ready to go to the FAA with the bids for a couple weeks.

But the shutdown over the funding extension the 21st since the agency's last long-term funding authorization expired in 2007 has airport district general manager Thomas Greer a little on edge.

"We're always nervous when something like this is hanging out there," Greer said.

The runway area safety project is the largest project at the airport in more than a decade. While federal funding is already programmed for the project, Greer said the district hoped to get its paperwork through the FAA in advance of far larger projects at major airports in the region.

The contractor bids are good for 120 days, so there isn't an immediate time crunch.

"After that, it begins to get serious," Greer said.

The FAA shutdown also is curtailing the collection of airline ticket fees that go into a trust fund that finances airport projects. And it is having an immediate effect on airport revenues.

Greer said each airport receives an annual entitlement from the FAA based on the number of people boarding planes. That amounts to about $2 million a year for the Monterey district, but it doesn't generate near enough revenue to pay for big projects, he said.

The runway area safety project, which is designed to comply with new safety standards, will involve terraced retaining walls and crushable concrete pads at both ends of the runway. A new road to the east end of the runway will connect to Monterey-Salinas Highway.

Last week, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the government stands to lose about $200 million a week in airline ticket taxes and $2.5 billion in airport construction projects will come to a halt with a forced shutdown.

About 4,000 FAA employees have been told to stop work, and work has halted on a $31 million project to build new air controller towers at the Oakland airport.

The Monterey project would require "a pretty good workforce by this fall," Greer said.

Larry Parsons can be reached at 646-4379 or [email protected] .