Disagreement over divesting the ATC function of the Federal Aviation Administration spilled over to the annual U.S. Chamber of Commerce aviation summit on March 22. In appearances there, several airline CEOs pushed back against critics of the proposal, which has foundered in Congress.

In a keynote address at the daylong conference in Washington, D.C., American Airlines chairman and CEO Doug Parker delivered a pointed defense of the proposal to create a new entity to manage the nation’s ATC system. Most major U.S. airlines—with the exception of Delta—favor establishing a federally chartered, not-for-profit corporation to manage the system, leaving the FAA as solely a regulatory agency. The new entity, governed by a board with prominent representation by the airlines, would charge airspace users for its services.

“Those who understand the system best” support the proposal, Parker said, including the immediate past three leaders of the FAA’s own Air Traffic Organization. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association “has pledged its complete cooperation,” and most passenger airlines also support the change. “The one airline that prefers the status quo seems to be more interested in preserving a competitive advantage than improving commercial aviation for all Americans,” he charged, without naming Delta.

“To detract from these facts, however, the corporate jet lobbyists and their allies continually characterize the ATC reform plan as ‘privatization’ in hopes that members of Congress will confuse the actual plan with the unfavorable idea of creating a for-profit corporation to run the air traffic control system,” Parker said, according to a transcript of the speech. “For the record, we oppose privatization and would oppose the creation of a private, for-profit entity if that were on the table, but it isn’t.”

Opponents of the proposal, which has been advanced by the Republican leadership of the House Transportation Committee, have thus far managed to keep it from passing with the next FAA reauthorization bill. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee has approved its own version of the legislation minus the proposal to create a separate ATC organization. With no rapprochement in sight before the FAA’s current authorization expires at month’s end, the House and Senate approved a short-term reauthorization to July 15.

Parker was not alone in promoting the FAA restructuring; offering supporting remarks at the Chamber summit were JetBlue Airways CEO Robin Hayes, Alaska Airlines CEO Brad Tilden, Spirit Airlines CEO Robert Fornaro and Virgin America CEO David Cush. Tilden called Parker’s speech “the best case for ATC reform that I’ve heard.”

In a separate address, Hayes said JetBlue fully supports the effort to create a self-funded, government-chartered nonprofit entity to manage ATC. “We keep our skies the safest in the world, but we are an outlier on the global stage when it comes to how we structure air traffic control. We are the only advanced nation in the world, effectively, where the same agency is regulating safety and running air traffic control,” he said. “Congress has an opportunity to act now to adopt a bold, transformational plan to end decades of inaction and create an entity that can upgrade and manage the air traffic control system.”

While the airline perspective dominated the conference, National Business Aviation Association president and CEO Ed Bolen took the opportunity to respond while introducing another speaker.

“One of the big myths is that putting the airlines in charge of the air traffic control system is going to solve all of our problems,” he said. “The reality is that we have been focused on this idea that the airlines have been proposing for nearly 30 years. It’s in their special interest to dominate the air traffic control system, and that has consistently hung up a lot of our efforts to pass FAA reauthorization bills.

“Today we have bipartisan support for 80 percent of the House FAA reauthorization bill—nearly 100 percent bipartisan support for the Senate bill,” Bolen added. “In fact, the only part that (doesn’t) enjoy bipartisan support is the privatization proposal that the airlines are proposing.”