Contract tower upgraded to FAA

GulfCharlie

Comrade Commissar
FAA
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Command Center
So we have all heard the stories, rumours, etc.. what I am looking for is a pub/union guidance on “
Number of total enplanements or airport category that drives/decides that a tower can be an FAA or contract tower?” I know there exists a pub somewhere but I cannot recall.

Not looking for the usual “it’ll never happen” just have some conversations about upgrades to a Class Charlie with the ATREP.
 
Not saying "it'll never happen", but an honest has it ever happened?

There's plenty of places that the Agency contracted out that I'm sure they regret that decision for how they played out over time, and other places where demographics have changed significantly since the advent of their towers (IWA, BZN, etc). I think that regret after the waves of contracting in the 90s has effectively frozen things since. Seller's remorse or whatever.
 
I just swear there was a pub denoting something about it. We all know about the 804 process, but this one is stumping me and my usual network of contacts.
 
IWA and BET should have went back to FAA from FCT a long time ago.

If neither of them have yet, idk that it will ever happen.

With that said, not the point of the post and I’d also love to see the reqs to make it happen.
 
If you can find the fct legislation might be able to backtrack from there
 
If Kona and Mesa can't get it, then the answer is probably never.

At one point KOA was pushing the equivalent of level 9 traffic.
 
IWA made me lose years off my life.
I've gotta ask, how the hell did yall manage that with contract pay? ? Did you have a bunch of experience prior? I've heard stories of pretty experienced people heading there and not being able to hack it.
 
Wasn't there a post of some guy calling everyone and their mother out about not applying to Kona recently? Like "youz a bitch if you don't leave your awesome 100k job in decent area to make 65k in Hawaii and work way harder and live near the poverty line!"
Haha yup. Guy was off his rocker. He even get dming me about how many applications they got and stuff lol.
 
IWA, obviously no one knows. They did just get a new tower that will open this year. More positions in the tower then allotted for staffing. So clearly designed for FAA operation. The airport just got $ from Grandpa Joe to fix their terminal. That will take about 2 yrs from now to complete. Their 32 gate terminal in the airports long term plan would obviously not start construction till years after that is completed and take 2-3 years to complete. And that terminal is designed to grow to 32 gates not start out that way. Obviously eventually IWA will go FAA I’m predicting 6-10yrs though.
 
I may or may not have seen an email saying the FAA was planning on taking over IWA in summer 2022 after the new tower was completed….back in 2020. obviously they blew a lot of smoke up someones ass cause that damn sure didn’t happen.
 
No contract towers will ever become FAA again and no FFA towers will ever become a FCT again simply because it is a logistical nightmare and would require lots of work. NATCA no longer works on negotiating, fighting for members, legislative causes at the facility level, or any project for the future other than the ones which have been impossibly locked up in FAA purgatory for years (ABACUS, new staffing numbers, the thing that will replace CRU-ART, N90 consolidation ,etc......) No way they apply the effort to add a few VFR towers, or dump a few towers averaging below 25K ops a year.
 
I’ll hop in the pissing contest. For the year consecutive I was at HWO (was there for 15 months total but for traffic count purposes) we did almost 350k operations. Six controllers, 6/10s, a manager who worked 2 hours a day and took Friday's off, open 7a-9p. I think we ranked 28th overall traffic count wise in the NAS. The same year I think IWA did something like 275k?

You can go to YouTube and search “HWO crash” and you’ll find pages upon pages of news segments as well as the infamous cockpit video of the student who has the GoPro mounted, bounced down the runway, and ended up nose down in the grass.

There are many issues with the entire setup. Idk how staffing numbers are now, nor traffic volume because I know they had some construction slated but I was listing to GC on LiveATC the other day and the all familiar “do not call me, if you are on the ground I will call you first otherwise maintain radio silence.” So it seems they’re still kicking. We had 6 controllers in the facility. We’d have 2 openers and 2 closers with an overlap in the middle (1115a-345p) where the openers would have enough time to make a head break, grab more water, and hop back on position to split off LC for a little while (had 2 LC positions, one for each parallel but rarely were able to de-combine due to staffing.) So a small crew of controllers often pushing 150 op hours on LC where you have 10-20 in the pattern on each side and pressure from corporate and county to increase numbers for some ungodly reason. FLL next door was pushing similar numbers with straight in AC ops and open 24/7 while having something like 25 on staff, making more working 40 hour weeks than we were making working 60. Time off? Kick rocks. Don’t even think about submitting a leave request. Transfer? We can’t even staff the facility.

I don’t know anything about IWA but I can make the argument for HWO until I’m blue in the face. Fuck that place.
 
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if FAAs solution to the staffing crisis is to contract out more towers, and move those CPC’s to other facilities. Reduce the number of FAA facilities, you immediately increase your staffing. That would be a pretty fun transition.
 
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