FAA to close 149 Towers

[Oakape]

Cut-backs happening everywhere -

FAA to close 149 air traffic towers - Yahoo! New Zealand - Totaltravel (http://nz.totaltravel.yahoo.com/news-opinions/news/a/-/16436435/faa-to-close-149-air-traffic-towers/)

[bbbs53]

Maybe. Last I heard the towers were going to sue the FAA for violating their own safety rules. There is a really good idea, use their very regulations to beat them. To bad no one is running the country!

[Gomrath]

Maybe. Last I heard the towers were going to sue the FAA for violating their own safety rules

The first set of contract towers and are due to close April 7.

[11Fan]

From the article:

The Federal Aviation Administration, in an abrupt pause to a high-profile sequester cut, announced Friday that it would delay previously planned closures for 149 air traffic control towers at small airports.

Read more: FAA delays closure of air traffic control towers | Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/05/faa-delays-closure-air-traffic-control-towers/#ixzz2PcIsULOP)

[Gomrath]

It has been a general cockup.
Tried to rush it through and local airfields have been rushing to get pilots up to speed with the revised local procedures.
The Tower staff must be wondering what on earth is going on knowing that they are going to be out of a job at some point in the near future..
Not very conducive to getting on with their job.

[PantLoad]

First,

It amazes me that the earth is about to stop turning because of
this sequestration. Make no mistake, the budget cuts are not
budget cuts...but, instead, reductions in budget increases.

For example, your employer promised you a 5% pay raise, but,
due to this and that, you'll be getting only a 3% pay raise. Gosh,
let's cut back to only four days a week of working, instead of five,
let's protest, let's let the elderly die, the children starve, etc., etc.

All this with a 3% budget increase.

And, it amazes me that it seems to have occurred to no one,
that government employees are not to be pitied for getting only
a 3% pay raise. The average factory worker in America is
barely hanging on to keeping his job....maybe having to take
actual pay and benefit cuts to keep his job....being taxes til he
chokes to pay these inflated wages and benefits of government
employees.

What a load of XXXX!


Fly safe,

PantLoad

[Darren999]

Date has been postponed to June ..
They are notifying the FAA that people will sue if they close certain towers..

[Mick16]

And yet Obama can spend $20 million on vacations in 2013......

Obama's Family Vacations to Cost Taxpayers More Than $20 Million (http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-taxpayer-vacation-cost/2013/01/04/id/470102)

[con-pilot]

Locally, the tower at the airport in Norman, Oklahoma, home of the University of Oklahoma, has funding to stay open, offered by the President of the University. No word if the FAA will accept the offer.

The same thing for Wiley Post Airport in Oklahoma City, the money coming from businesses that have their company aircraft based there. No word about the offer from the FAA for them either.

About everyone is still asking the same question. As the funding cuts that are due to the sequestration are cuts from budget increases, where the hell did the money come from to run the towers last year?

Its a nasty political game that being played it seems to me. And some oil men and the President of the University of Oklahoma is calling the government's bluff in Oklahoma. 'You don't have enough money to keep our towers open, fine, we do, keep them open.'

[Mick16]

It's all posturing. Punish and scare innocent citizens so that we accept a "need" to expand government exponentially. They have the money for the towers. After all, didn't John Kerry announce millions of dollars of support to help Egypt's economy the day after sequestration kicked in?

[George Semel]

My home airport is on the list for closing, and to be frank the Airport is dam near a ghost town most of the time, the last numbers they have is 38,000 movements for the year. The last airline to have service to it, quit in 1989. The tower should have been closed years ago. As another poster has stated, its not a cut just a cut in spending increases. Be he said he was going to make it as painful as possible because he is not getting his way. The Federal Government is FUBAR. Out of ever dollar they spend they borrow 47 cents. This nonsense that got people in a not amounts to 2.4 cents out of a dollar. with my current income, unemployed it would be if I spent 12 dollars less than I do now. That is not even enough avgas to taxi to the end of the runway from the base of the tower! Its all BS.

[westhawk]

All of this sequestration nonsense is a political smokescreen. Closing towers willy-nilly is another example of politics gone wrong. Of course there are towers that should be closed due to lack of demand for services, but not without performing due diligence first!

The FAA already has a process for evaluating the safety implications and measuring cost versus benefit and it's not being followed. IOW, each tower needs to be evaluated individually to determine whether it meets the criteria for being needed. Simple traffic counts are not the only consideration either. Airspace usage, peak traffic levels and IFR activity are among the things which need to be evaluated in order to make an informed determination as to which airports require ATC services, which don't and what level of services are required.

The potential for lawsuits to halt the closures has already been publicized. This is why the closure date has been pushed back and also why it's been reported by Avweb and others that members of congress are currently considering the introduction of a bill to take these decisions away from the administration in the form of new law. All unnecessary if only the existing rules were being followed. I guess we'll see what happens...

westhawk