However, that plan from Skywest Charter has been awaiting action by the U.S. Department of Transportation for a year.

Now, a group of airport managers has joined company executives to publicly push for action from the Department of Transportation.

“We know the Skywest Charter proposal provides an ideal opportunity to preserve Essential Air Service to our community,” Rhonda Chambers, the director of aviation at Fort Dodge Regional Airport, said Wednesday morning during a press conference held via Zoom that included multiple airport managers and Wade Steel, chief commercial officer of Skywest Charter.

Chambers said the plan has been “needlessly held in limbo.”

Chambers and other airport managers said the Air Line Pilots Association, a major pilots union, has objected to the plan, which has slowed down the review of it. Chambers said the supposed safety concerns raised by the union are not at all factual.

“We feel that it’s all just to mislead,” said Corey Keller, the public works director in Dodge City, Kansas, who oversees that city’s airport.

Skywest, under the name Skywest Airlines, serves Fort Dodge and the other communities with CRJ 200 jets which seat 50 people.

Steel said the airline proposes to take 20 seats out of each jet, making them 30-seat aircraft. It would then fly those jets with two pilots in the cockpit, each of whom would have a minimum of 1,500 hours of flying time.

Using 30-seat aircraft would enable Skywest Charter to operate under less restrictive rules for charter airlines, but Steel insisted that his company would still use pilots with 1,500 hours of flying time and rely on Transportation Security Administration checkpoints to screen passengers.

Skywest serves Fort Dodge as a United Express carrier, providing passengers with seamless connections to United Airlines flights to destinations all over the world through Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

Steel said Wednesday that Skywest has a ”great relationship” with United Airlines, but would have to do some negotiating with the company after the proposal is approved by federal officials.

The plan Steel described was submitted to the Department of Transportation in June 2022.

“This is their solution to continue to serve the small rural communities,” Chambers said later Wednesday afternoon. “They are not trying to find a loophole. They’re trying to find a solution.”

She said U.S. senators Joni Ernst and Charles Grassley and U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, all Republicans, have sent a letter to the Department of Transportation, urging it to approve the proposal.

Chambers said the Department of Transportation officials “need to do their job.”

Skywest, doing business as United Express, began serving Fort Dodge in March 2021, initially with flights to Chicago. The flights are subsidized with money from the federal Essential Air Service program, which provides funding to support flights to smaller communities.

In October 2021, the airline also began providing flights to Denver as well.

In March 2022, the airline announced that it would stop serving Fort Dodge and 28 other communities. However, the Department of Transportation has required the airline to continue serving those communities until a replacement can be found.

In addition to Chambers, Wednesday’s call included airport managers from Mason City, plus Dodge City, Hays, Liberal and Salina in Kansas.