Airlines For
America (A4A), the country’s primary airline trade organization, intensified
its call for U.S air traffic control to be transferred from the purview
of the FAA to the auspices of a nonprofit corporation that would be modeled
after Canada’s NavCan.
“We are fortunate
to have the safest ATC system in the world but it is far from the most
efficient,” said American Airline CEO Doug Parker during a telephone news
conference on Tuesday. A4A CEO Nick Calio and executives from Southwest, JetBlue, Federal
Express, Alaska Airlines and the freight carrier Atlas Air joined him on the
call.
A4A’s push on air
traffic control comes as the FAA
is being funded under temporary legislation that is set to expire on March 31.
A4A members say
that FAA reauthorization should establish the new nonprofit in order to free
air traffic control from partisan fighting over budgets and to speed
development of NextGen, the GPS-based air traffic control technology that is
supposed to replace the radar-based system currently used in the U.S.
Delta, which
left A4A in October, disagrees, saying that the process of restructuring the
air traffic control framework would sidetrack NextGen implementation.
Rep. Bill
Shuster (R-Pa.), who chairs the House transportation committee, is expected to
include the nonprofit proposal in the FAA reauthorization bill he will file.