Tower Closures Equal Slippery Slope

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The most talked about effect of the so-called sequestration cuts is the closing of more than 200 contract towers around the country. If you don’t know whether your tower is a contract or FAA tower, we’re not surprised. Contract towers are efficient, safe and well run, just like their FAA counterparts (some say, even more so).

The result of turning towered fields into uncontrolled fields is predictable to those of us who have flown into and out of non-towered airports. There’s going to be confusion, especially on the part of pilots who are used to tower controllers doing the seeing-and-avoiding for them.

I’m hoping the cuts never materialize, but it’s looking more and more likely, despite the great work of GA-friendly legislators, including Jerry Moran of Kansas, and our friends at NBAA and AOPA, who are lobbying hard to fend off the closures.

If they do come down, I fear it will be the first step toward not only fewer services for GA but also increased costs. In a worst case scenario, things could start to look like Europe. How bad is that?

Friend and fellow airplane fanatic Adam Smith posted on his Facebook page the other day about his recent trip into Edinburgh, Scotland, in a light airplane, an experience he describes as an eye-opener in terms not only of sheer cost but of the extent of U.K.’s nickel and diming of GA pilots.

Imagine you're in a light single visiting Edinburgh, roughly equivalent to a Class C airport in the USA. The navigation fee, ground handling fee, security charge, four hours parking and departure fee will cost you ... wait for it ... $357.17. And if you want some avgas, that'll be $15.10 per U.S. gallon please.

Adam, who works for AOPA as senior VP for the Center to Advance the Pilot Community (he needs extra large business cards for that title), was I think merely trying to underscore how good we pilots over here have it. At my local Austin Bergstrom (an airport equivalent to Edinburgh, says Smith), flying a small single costs nothing to land (bounce as many times as you’d like), $20 to park on Signature’s ramp if you don’t buy gas, and around $7 a gallon for the gas if you do. For a grand total of, well, a lot less than it costs in Edinburgh.

When I asked Adam if Edinburgh was a worst case scenario, he replied that it was, but that the next-best case scenarios are pretty bad too.

These charges [at Edinburgh] effectively exclude GA from the larger airports (which seems to be the point of them). Next level down are the smaller licensed fields like Perth, Glenrothes, Dundee and Cumbernauld. You are looking at $12-plus per gallon and a landing fee of maybe $15. Still remember being charged for eight touch & goes in one lesson at Cumbernauld!

Adam’s point is, this is the kind of thing we join AOPA to help prevent. I couldn’t agree more, and will this year renew and expand upon my commitment to the organization. I’d advise you to do the same. If we wait until it’s too late, it will be, well, too late.

Here and there pilots can find ways to avoid the worst of the high costs, and we’re all for that. There are workarounds, at least for some of the costs. Lots of pilots use unimproved fields and club-run strips for their aviation fix, but transportation flying, as we know it in the States is an expensive affair.

My point is, we do want to draw the line in the sand right here and right now. Having the best airspace system in the world is a tremendous boon to the United States economy, not to mention an integral part of our national heritage, where the skies belong to all of us and sky-high costs are rightly seen as a way to exclude us from them.

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Submitted by Skywriter1 on March 20, 2013.

Assuming that a Class D tower employs 8 controllers/administrators per shift and has a working budget of $2.5 million per year, closing 173 towers (at last count) nets a "savings" of $430 million per year. This is strong political capital in a sequestration climate. (The figures are mine, not OMB)

The question that should be asked is WHY the FAA hasn't raised hell over this. What's in it for them to take a low profile and not supply Fox News with predictions of aircraft falling out of the sky because of Sequestration's control tower red tide.

My guess is that they were offered a choice: cut your operations budget or we'll cut your ADS-B funds. Well, ADS-B is years away from "replacing" regional radars or ATC and it's probably waiting for Congressional plastic surgeons to graft it to carbon tax. Meanwhile, accountants are making flight safety decisions for us. Unacceptable.

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Submitted by tmcdonough19 on March 20, 2013.

The crunchy question that nobody seems willing to address in public: Why do ANY ATC towers exist?

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Submitted by robert goyer on March 20, 2013.

You could ask the crunchy question of why any "FAA" towers exist, but not why any ATC towers exist. One needs only to fly into Teterboro, Santa Ana, Palm Beach, Midway or Peachtree-Dekalb once on a busy day to immediately know the answer to that question.

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Submitted by ucdras19 on March 21, 2013.

This is exactly why our government runs massive deficits. It isn't people on welfare or Obamacare that is bankrupting this country. It is a citizenry that demands expensive government services but doesn't want to pay the taxes to fund them. Everyone says they care about cutting government spending but when the cuts come from a segment of government they depend on, a "not in my backyard" attitude always ensues.

As a captain for a fractional operator who routinely flies into both towered and uncontrolled airports I will feel these cuts firsthand. Are the friendly and competent controllers at smaller airports helpful? Absolutely! Are they a necessity? Unfortunately not. Five-hundred million dollars may not seem like a great deal of money when we are running trillion dollar deficits, but every penny counts. This post is not meant to be a political statement, it's just the cold hard truth. Something politicians on both sides of the aisle refuse to acknowledge.

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Submitted by reykjavik on March 23, 2013.

We all know that government is evil and can do nothing right? Remember that when you have an out of control, dangerous airspace in which to land. You're getting exactly what you deserve.

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Submitted by ChampPilot44 (not verified) on March 24, 2013.

Why does a rich fella like Robert Goyer care about $15/gallon avgas coming to the USA?
I thought your whole business model was to keep aviation to the elite who can afford it. Looks like you're getting your way so far.

Insert Fox news talking point here.

p.s. We need another article about a $40M corporate plane.

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Submitted by tmcdonough19 on May 14, 2013.

My question was rhetorical, that is, when the FAA announced the nuclear option on contract towers they did not cite any of their own studies that justified the existence of any of the towers in the first place.

I am based at KRBD, a class D under the DFW bravo and if our tower closes the D10 TRACON would be required to handle all the traffic all the way to the ground at our airport on arrival in addition to their already stupendous volume, especially when the airlines at DAL and DFW are running their hub complexes. At least with a tower the handoff from TRACON occurs at a decent distance and it enables me to fly the final phase without having to listen for my call sign amongst the TRACON cacophony as well as the English as a second language students on the CTAF.

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