Compromise reached for late flights
ASPEN DAILY NEWS:
Compromise reached for late flights
by Catherine Lutz
Federal Aviation Administration officials have decided on a compromise that will avoid closing the Aspen airport’s control tower two to three hours earlier each night, but it will shift some responsibilities to a radar control center in Longmont.
The change, which goes into effect Aug. 1, means that one air traffic controller will be on duty in the Aspen tower from 8-10 p.m., rather than the two that are there now.
The move comes as the FAA is struggling with staffing issues, locally and nationally. It satisfies local officials who had been concerned that closing the tower earlier at night would have had service issues — as an example, no one around to watch for sudden changes in the weather could have led to more diverted and canceled flights.
“It sounds like a good compromise to me,” said Bill Tomcich, local airline liaison and president of central reservations agency Stay Aspen Snowmass. “Whether the radar is there or at Aspen doesn’t make a difference.”
But at least one veteran controller says shifting the radar function to the Denver air traffic control center in Longmont will make a difference, as controllers there are responsible for large areas of airspace and up to 21 airplanes. Aspen controllers are typically guiding one or at most a handful of aircraft within its much smaller airspace.
“The personal touch is what you’re going to lose,” said Lyle Burrington, a Longmont air traffic controller who is also president of the Denver center’s union. “If an airplane makes a mistake and strays off course, the chances it’s going to be caught are less in Longmont than they are in Aspen.”
A good compromise?
The Aspen tower’s chronic staffing issues are at the root of the recent decision to split the radar and visual tower functions.
The tower has had high employee turnover in the recent past because of federally mandated wages that can’t keep up with the local cost of living, partially due to Sardy Field’s status as a rural airport — with a rural wage scale. The employee crunch has gotten so bad that officials considered mandatory overtime and less vacation time.
They also considered closing the tower two hours earlier than the usual 10 p.m. shutdown in the summer and three hours earlier in the winter. (Most private air traffic has a sundown curfew but commercial flights may land without tower guidance.) The official reason for this proposal was that Aspen has fewer than four planes flying in and out at night — and that’s a threshold that allows the FAA to reduce tower hours.
But officials beyond the FAA weren’t apprised of the proposed change, and were concerned at its potential ramifications. Airline officials said they might not schedule later flights or would be more cautious with diversions and cancellations should the tower be empty.
That could have made service at Aspen’s notoriously tough-to-land-at airport worse, local officials said.
But according to several sources, airport director Jim Elwood took the local concerns to the FAA and, after some discussion, the solution to split the functions was reached.
“I think they came out with a very strong solution and we’re very pleased,” said Elwood. “I don’t see any change in service levels with this. The tower staying open to meet the customer needs is still there.”
The local tower manager will review traffic levels this summer and next winter and then re-evaluate the decision.
Elwood explained that in the meantime, a new type of approach would likely increase the ability for aircraft to land at night or in adverse weather. The approach — which will likely be widely used in the next couple of years — would use a GPS satellite system in combination with new avionics and electronics in the aircraft that would allow the plane to get closer to the ground before deciding whether or not it can land. The Aspen area’s mountainous terrain currently forces pilots to make that decision farther away.
Local air traffic controller Wayne Hall, who also represents the National Air Traffic Controllers Association locally, agreed that “the flying community won’t notice any difference. Ideally we should have been able to keep two people up there, but that hasn’t happened so we have to go to plan B.”
In terms of the airport’s staffing issues, however, two fewer hours of manpower per day (14 per week) doesn’t mean a full position can be eliminated.
“It will reduce the number of hours, but since we’re already so far below the number of people needed it doesn’t relieve the problem — it just lessens it.”
Splitting the radar and visual functions simply makes sense, FAA spokesman Mike Fergus said.
“If they can maintain the safety envelope, be more efficient and save money, why not do that?” he asked.
But according to Burrington, safety is an issue with the new arrangement. The Longmont control center governs the airspace of portions of eight states and each controller can be dealing with up to 21 aircraft at a time.
Aspen flights will likely be absorbed by the controller guiding flights in and out of the Eagle County airport, arrivals from the northwest into Denver and the busy departure traffic toward the West Coast at night, Burrington said.
Because the Longmont controller has a much larger and busier airspace to keep an eye on, slight changes in the movements of an airplane bound for Aspen might escape his notice, he said. “If you’re in mountainous terrain and even if the pilot messes up just a little bit, if (the air traffic controller) is the only one watching that plane, he’s going to catch it.”
Burrington said that the Longmont center was at its lowest staffing levels of fully certified controllers in years, and that’s resulted in removing backup duties.
“Historically we’ve had layers of safety: If the pilot messed up, the controller would catch it; if the controller messed up, his partner would catch it,” he said. “We’re just peeling away layers of safety that have been there for years.”
He added, “It’s just disappointing that the FAA to save a few hundred bucks is going to do these things that on the surface look like they don’t matter, but really they do.”
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