In the FAA’s rush to shut down scores of the nation’s contract control towers, nobody within the agency saw it necessary to perform a thorough analysis of the potential safety ramifications. Nor did the agency conduct a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis to consider, among other things, the millions of dollars it took to build the towers at the airports that will now lose them. Perhaps worst of all, there is no long-term plan in place for resuming services at affected towers. Once they’re gone, well, who knows what happens next.
Actually, the FAA put out a helpful media “information” sheet just yesterday spelling out what will transpire at many of the towers that are now on the sequestration cutting block. It isn’t pretty.
