.

blue gets you public services, red, none.

Let the screaming begin.

The amount of calls they would receive on the first day when there are hundreds of canceled flights will make them come to an agreement instantly.

Have fun with that filthy rich execs. You voted for these knuckleheads, so deal with it.

Sorry, cuts...they just have to deal with it.

Maybe Pat Robertson can pray the crashes away...

Gay marriage is the leading cause of airplane crashes. I got that fact from Bigot's weekly. The article was an excerpt from "The encyclopedia for guys that wear pointy white hats, but are not the pope"

Pray hard.

In the linked article it sounds as though most of the towers being closed are contract towers. Those, of course, are the towers which are contracted out to outside companies to run. Most of those are non-union, and to be brutally honest, in my experience the level of competence and service at the contract towers is below that of the government run towers.

While there are a few municipal airports on it, it looks like many of the proposed airfields are primarily for executive jets.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2013/02/22/travel-delays/1938959/

It'll be tough for Eau Claire and LaCrosse in Wisconsin. Would have been good to keep one of those two open as there's no other service nearby (Rocherster, MN probably the closest.) The others closing in Wisconsin have reasonable alternatives.

Perhaps Janesville will benefit by not having Ryan come home so often.

Say it aint so!

Just closing a control tower doesn't mean you can't take off and land at an airport. You just don't have someone in the tower holding your hand every step of the way.

I will add that this places a higher workload on pilots, especially at some of the busier airports on that list. And of course this will cut into safety margins. Some of the airports which I'm familiar with on that list are not such a huge deal, but some of the closures I've seen worry me.

It is no big deal at a smaller airport for pilots to use the common traffic advisory frequency to announce their position and landing intentions. There are even international non towered airports where large commercial jets take off and land. Probably would be more dangerous at busy airports.
-Airplane

period. let them drive or take the train.

the quote you are using is from the film "AirPLANE", not "Airport".

Maybe the free market will guide these planes to safety...

Love, Peace and Shelter. lmsp

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An advantage of tower control of an airport is that an incoming aircraft can often enter the landing pattern more efficiently.

Without a tower, planes more often fly around the airport so as to enter the traffic pattern from single direction, which makes it easier for pilots to coordinate with each other over the CTAF. (An airports Common Traffic Advisory radio Frequency is how pilots tell each other what they are doing at non-Tower controlled airports.)

But with a tower, the controller can bring pilots directly into the pattern from whatever their approaching direction is. That allows them to land sooner, thus burning less fuel and saving everyone time.

they could land at all if the tower wasn't manned. I said lower CO2 based on no flights.

Non pilots often have no idea just how many small airports are out there. For every large metropolitan airport there are dozens of smaller ones. Some are pretty busy running shuttle services or charter flights, some are just quiet grass strips where people fly nice old tail draggers on weekends. Most are a strip of pavement used by a few dozen Cessna's, with some hangers and a cozy little flight school.

Most of these small airports have no tower. And some that do have a tower only have it manned during certain hours. That's pretty common in some outlier airports that only have a few medium size airliners flying shuttle flights to them a couple times a day.

The airport I learned at was just on the cusp of needing a tower due to how busy it was. It has everything operating out of it, from a glider port up to a business jet charter operation. The CTAF channel there was VERY active, as all the pilots communicated with each other to get in and out in a mostly smooth way. It worked pretty well then, but I hear there is a tower now, and I didn't see it on that list.

So, while having that particular tower stay operational is probably a good thing, the airport wouldn't shut down without it.

Just because it is a small airport serving a rural or remote area does not make it an executive airport. How totally inappropriate of posters to assume such. Read the list, do a little homework and find out where the airport is first. My hometown is on the list and I can assure you that although small it is the only personal and business travel airport available to us within a 2 1/2 hour over the mountains and across the dunes access we have. Much of America, just a whole bunch lives beyond the major metropolises and we still count ... or use to and then again, only and just right up and until they shut it down in April.

Sugarland is a very red city in Fort Bend County. I imagine that this will be a pain to some of the airplane owners who use this airport. CD22 is a very red congressional district and it will be fun to see some republicans complain to Pete Olson

I used to live in Houston and work in Louisiana and my boss and I flew his single engine plane between the Sugarland airport and a small town in Louisiana every morning and then back every evening.

I remember the first time coming back from Louisiana and it was night crossing into the heavy traffic from Intercontinental in northern Houston. My boss said "keep your eyes open and scan the horizon." I about shit my pants.

It was good to hear that voice from the Sugarland control tower!

"austerity" = Privatization opportunity. "The Shock Doctrine".

I wonder if that airport is on the list...

Not good. Tweed is the only other airport in CT besides Bradley that has commercial service. So now we are down to one airport.

it just makes them more dangerous. There are procedures for landing / taking off without tower control, but its more likely to lead to pilot error and collisions / near collisions -- especially at medium sized airports.

Some of these airports are fairly large, and although they may not need 24 hour coverage, but they really should have tower coverage at peak times.

This list includes:

Riverside, CA
Santa Monica, CA
Danbury, CT
Cobb County-McCollum Field (a very big private airport)
Sioux City
Terre Haute
Shreveport
Ann Arbor
Niagara Falls
Stillwater
Jackson, TN

http://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/Facilities_Could_Be_Closed.pdf

etc., etc. -- basically every airport, including those with commercial service, that has less than 250,000 residents in the town.

I also think its worth noting that General Aviation pays fuel taxes which fund these airports and improvements -- a tax that generates over $1 billion / year in excess of what it spends, and has been looted by the federal government.

Literally.

This increases the amount of traffic that must be handled by the remaining controllers for planes in between major points. There are a lot of potential issues here that could snowball.

Commercial and general aviation can do just fine without control towers. Most of the airports in this country are without control towers and all certificated pilots do just fine.

This goes far beyond what towers do at the local airports. These towers also handle a lot of in the vicinity air traffic that is going from major airports to major airports. According to the report this will increase significantly the traffic that must be handled by the towers not closed.

Who knows. Perhaps it won't mean anything--but I don't think a thoughtful informed response is "so what?"

Towers and the various centers should be fine. This will be no where as bad as the PATCO events