National Aeronca Association Bulletin Board

If you are interested in Tower closing go to: https//goo.gl/hHfFL.

dale

Dale,

Sorry but the link seemed to be broken.

Here is what I found when I searched for closings
http://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/F ... Closed.pdf

Is this what you meant?

Richard

Richard,

Yes, but the link I gave was a report after the amendment to keep the contract towers was voted down in the U.S. Senate. The link format gave me some trouble at first too. I think it may be related to using google chrome as a browser. anyway it gives the exact list of towers to be closed on April 7th and another batch proposed for closure 9/30/2013.


Dale

Unfortunately our local Tower is government recognized, but locally funded with private controllers. I was hoping it would get closed. It was only opened because of people who bought low priced property around the airport, knowing they were in the flight path, now want restriction on the use.

Our local tower (EAU) is one on the list to be closed. It's actually not that busy. There is a bit of corporate traffic going and some GA but probably not any more than we had years ago with pilots using CTAF. To my knowledge there's not a lot of instruction either which is kind of sad to me. Many moons ago we had a flight service station there but they only gave advisories, too.

Unsure when this is going to happen.

Mike

Our local tower at Parkersburg, WV (KPKB) is also one of the towers being closed. While I am not surprised that it is on the list, I am surprised that apparently little if any thought was given to possible significant issues related to the closure and how they might be addressed in a relatively short time. We have a few commuter planes that come and go and depending upon what CTAF frequency is assigned to the airport, there may be no way to turn the runway lights on and off for the night flights (they are currently controlled during off hours by keying the tower freq). Also, they may need to get the janitor to run up in the tower and turn the beacon on and off. Without the tower there will be no one to record the ATIS, which had been done by the controller. I'm hoping that all will get worked out in the next couple weeks, but for an organization that typically moves slower than a turtle, it will certainly be a challenge.

Around my neck of the woods, Riverside, Fullerton and El Monte are on the list. All these are fairly busy airports, especially since a ton of flight training goes on around here.

Frankly, I am not remotely bothered by this. I don't fly IFR if I can avoid it and there are busier uncontrolled airports around than those; they function just fine. I wish San Bernardino was on the list, but I believe it is locally funded; it has a 10,000ft runway and it used to be great fun to see how many stop and go take offs and landings you could along it! Although the controllers there probably would not object to such fun and games, since they are bored out of their skulls 95% of the time.