That kind of rhetoric is becoming common these days, as the small- and private-plane community engages in a bruising fight with the big airlines over who should pay for drastically needed upgrades to the country's air traffic control system. Rep. Jerry Costello, head of the House Aviation Subcommittee, says a bill to fund the Federal Aviation Administration and improvements in air traffic control is "the most important piece of aviation legislation in years" because it will "determine the direction of aviation for years to come."

No one doubts the system is blinking red. Air traffic in the big hubs is expected to triple in the next two decades. And with an aging air traffic control system-the United States is the only developed country that hasn't upgraded from a 1950s-era analog control system to a more effective digital one-delays are expected to go from bad to worse. Last year, more than 1 in 5 flights arrived at the gate at least 15 minutes late. And passengers at the three big New York airports experienced on-time arrivals roughly 65 percent of the time.

Grim as that figure is, Russell Chew, the FAA's former top air traffic official, has estimated delays will be 62 percent higher than 2004 levels by 2014. "We're at the pivot point," says Marion Blakey, the head of the FAA, "where either we make a solid, sustainable commitment to the [upgraded] system ... or we miss that opportunity altogether-and face delays like we've never seen."

Funding debate. The proposal on the table, passed by a Senate committee last week, aims to make that commitment. Now, about half the money in the Airport and Airway Trust Fund-which pays many of the costs of air traffic control-comes from a 7.5 percent ticket tax on airlines. But that funding stream has become less dependable recently with the increased popularity of low-cost carriers. And many say it won't cover the costs of technology like satellites and GPS trackers that would comprise the upgraded system.

The White House recently proposed scrapping the ticket tax and replacing it with 200-percent higher fuel taxes, higher plane licensing fees, and a charge on even the smallest planes wanting to land at the nation's largest airports-a fee they don't pay now.

The Senate opted for a more middle-of-the-road approach: It wants the government to assess a fee of $25 per flight on commercial airliners and on the 10 percent of general aviation planes that use the air traffic system, mostly high-performance corporate jets and large turboprop planes. That money would be earmarked exclusively for the air traffic upgrades. Increasing the noncommercial jet fuel tax from 21 cents to 49 cents would also add to the FAA's general coffers.

The funding debate pits big commercial airlines against smaller operators as well as the business community and hundreds of thousands of U.S. hobby fliers backed by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a lobbying powerhouse.

The smaller groups claim the big airlines would pay $150 million less in fees than they do now under the Senate plan. Some rural air taxis, like Bettles Air in Alaska, use the very turbine jets that would get strapped with new fees. "We also think the $25 user fee is just the camel's nose under the tent," says Phil Boyer, president of AOPA. In Europe, Boyer says, small planes pay $1,000 just to land at London's Heathrow Airport, and jets can be subject to takeoff, en-route, and noise fees.

Still, the big airlines say their smaller counterparts are not paying their fair share: Although general aviation planes are responsible for 16 percent of the costs of the air traffic control system, the FAA says, they now pay only about 3 percent of the taxes that go into the trust fund, and private-jet traffic is expected to triple in the next decade. "Everyday passengers," says Blakey, "shouldn't have to keep picking up the tab of our CEOs."

General aviation advocates, meanwhile, blame the high costs on the airlines' hub-and-spoke networks, which require more sophisticated systems for controlling many planes in the same place at once.

The House plans to tackle its own funding scheme next month. Costello, leading the effort there, is more hostile to user fees and says he's "not convinced" the current system can't cover the tab for modernization. Senators, meanwhile, have tossed in another hot potato-a "passenger bill of rights" that would force airlines to provide water and food to passengers stuck on the tarmac on delayed planes. That's just one more issue that needs to be resolved before September 30, when the current funding taxes expire. "Everybody agrees" the system needs upgrading, said Sen. Trent Lott, an author of the Senate bill, "but everybody also says, 'I won't pay for it!'"

This story appears in the May 28, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.