Most difficult towers?

phillyman2633 Epic Member KDAB

Hahahahahaha I'm in the fast lane to OKC now

chrispage Rookie

I am going to have to throw GRK out there.

Joint use Army airfield with a civil air carrier terminal. Though it does not have the high number of daily operations, or crossing runways, the different types of traffic that goes there is quite diverse.

Normal daily operations include air force trainer be-40's up to 4-9 in the traffic pattern, usually only one at a time c-5, army be-20's, contract c-208, h-60/64/47's (2-6) doing constant pattern work (who mind you hardly know how to fly...let alone do not listen to atc instruction so you have to constantly watch them). Then the troops and equiptment that come in and out, c-5's, an-124's, 737's, md-11's, dc-10's. With all that at a constant, throw in the scheduled civil air carriers, at-72's, crj7's, and sf34's. And just when you thought that was enough, here comes the army UAV who is headed out to the range for practice. And to mention the range, there is a huge set of MOA's that butts up to the edge of the airfield.

May not be near as complex as some of the others mentioned but almost every rule applys and it is a practice approach facily. so the IFR traffic is high enough for it to be a GS-12 DoD facility...and boarderline imo should be 13. What I mentioned was just the tower traffic really.

Oh and I forgot to mention the VFR pop-up traffic coming from different military training areas, who are stationed here. Also there is a careflight team just inside the tower airspace.

But I will say that it's either feast or famine. Either you are slammed or there is nothing at all. Opposed to some of the others mentioned where your traffic is constantly steady.

JeremyEB2003 Newcomer

I was at the C90 Assessment and there were storms all day every day with marginal VFR.... Crazy. One runway change was pretty crazy. They were doing simultaneous parallel ILS to 14R and L and ILS 28 which was something I didn't expect to see at a place like that.. It was wild to see just nearly opposite direction (5 degrees off of opposite direction) ILS approaches in MVFR conditions with packed finals. Also, during this configuration they were running ILS approaches to RWY 14 at MDW which is 12 miles southeast of ORD also with a packed final. I can't see any airport being harder than ORD. This was a RWY change which makes it harder anyway but is being used only as an extreme visual example of the difficulty and complexity.

Upwego Newcomer

Many of the G.A. towers in central/NE FL are difficult to work (just like in AZ). Lots, and I mean lots, of foreign student pilots, big flight schools doing IFR and VFR work. F11 and DAB TRACONS do a great job handling this volume as well. DAB and SFB are the busy GA FAA ATCTs. Many of the towers are FCTs and they work their asses off too. CRG, XFL, OMN, EVB, TIX, MLB, ISM are all FCTs that handle lots of traffic. MLB was the busiest FCT is the US in 2011 and XFL was right behind them. Hats off to these guys and gals that do this with half or less the manning an FAA tower has.

phillyman2633 Epic Member KDAB

I think everyone can send their pics to him now

atcguruaf Rico Suave Right here

my facility is the busiest, not quite as busy as my last facility and definitely easier than my next, until I arrive at said facility and the saying repeats itself, or something like that.

purpletw Trusted Contributor

This thread is silly. Of course most people will say "my facility is the busiest"