Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is asking Congress to approve $30 billion to rebuild the nation's air traffic control system, and he is doing it alongside the chief executives of the major US airlines.

Duffy appeared at a press conference with airline leaders to press lawmakers to act on the funding request. The coalition spans carriers that compete fiercely in the market but share a common exposure: the operational and financial cost of an air traffic control system that lacks enough controllers and relies on equipment that in some cases dates back decades.

The $30 billion ask would fund new equipment, facility upgrades and an accelerated controller hiring pipeline — the personnel shortfall being the constraint that most directly shapes airline schedules. When control towers and radar facilities run short-staffed, the Federal Aviation Administration imposes ground stops and flow restrictions, and airlines absorb the delay minutes, cancellations and crew-disruption costs that follow.

The airline CEOs' presence matters politically. Carriers carry weight with congressional appropriators, and a unified front between the department and the industry reduces the space for lawmakers to treat the request as an administration wish list rather than an operational necessity.

Duffy's push comes after a string of high-profile incidents and outages that put the system's fragility on the public record. Airline executives have argued privately and publicly that capacity growth — new routes, added frequencies, larger hub banks — is effectively capped until the controller workforce recovers and the equipment base is modernized.

For carriers, the funding fight is a capacity question, not an abstract modernization debate. Aircraft deliveries have resumed at Boeing and Airbus, but airlines can only schedule what the ATC system can handle. Groundings and flow-control delays translate directly into lost block hours, misconnected crews and reputational damage with corporate travelers.

Congress has not yet moved the request, and the outcome will shape how quickly the FAA can hire and train controllers and replace aging radar, telecom and facility infrastructure.

What happens next depends on appropriators: if the $30 billion advances, the FAA gains a funded path to rebuild staffing and equipment; if it stalls, airlines face continued schedule constraints and the department loses momentum on a fix both it and the industry say is overdue.