Airport KGTU
"I received official word from Washington DC this evening and our tower is slated for closure on April 7th.
We are working on our options at a local and state level but once we exercise that option it puts us in a position of possibly never receiving federal funding again.
Therefore, we as contract towered airport managers are working together to keep fighting this on a federal level because this is our best option for long term operations. I will be asking for your support in the next few days and ask you to email or call our elected officials. I will forward the points that we have been asked to address.
There is a limited time frame to file for an exemption with the FAA based on the effect of our tower closure as a “national impact”.
I will be generating a response based our FAA designated reliever status to ABIA.
I will be sending another email soon with contact info and points you may copy and forward."
This is beginning to get quite interesting in the States. If it does bite, and we have no reason to believe it wont, what will it do ultimately to training costs in the States?
I'm watching with interest. It'd be fun to fly into either of the local contract tower airports on Unicom 24/7, as we normally do outside tower hours of operation.
If some of the contract towers were to be shut down permanently, they would become pilot controlled airports as most of them were in the past. At one of such airport locally, operations decreased substantially when the tower was built a few years ago - much of the airports use was students operating out of larger FAA staffed tower controlled airports going there to practice touch and goes without ATC.
We are losing the contract tower at a nearby airport. I like the people who operate the tower and it is nice to have if someone else is paying for it, but I can't get worked up about it. The only time it will be really missed is during NASCAR events at the Charlotte Speedway, but they could setup a temporary tower for those few events.
The "problem" is that US private pilots are trained to operate from untowered airports 
At some places I can think of here, it would be hell.
The most interesting thing to me will be to see if the FAA, having shut down the contract towers to save money, reopens them with (more expensive) FAA personnel later on. The endless pursuit of power and spending is not something even Congress can easily remove from the Federal bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, we'll be entertained by the battle and go flying without effect.
What is the background to this? From the posts above it appears to be part of some larger policy.
My understanding of it is that the parties in the USA can't agree on what parts of the budget to cut (or alternatively to borrow more and increase the budget) so they reduce funding indiscriminately.
From an outsider's perspective, I see that Georgetown has 47,000 residents and is close to the capital, Austin. How many aircraft movements do you have, and do you serve a large chunk of surrounding area or just the locality?
List of scheduled closures is here. The majority of closures may never happen, and as has been previously stated, most of the US GA operate on Unicom, well trained and, sometimes, well co-ordinated. The issue will be that the US is already struggling with smaller airport closures, due to diminishing traffic, airfield owners wanting out, possibly to resell the land as brown belt/development. If the FAA, move in, once contractors are out, then that may sound a differing challenge, financially. No, I was interested in the training outfits, potentially having to alter their training schedules, which may in the long term increase the training costs. Please correct me, but I assume that for training, they require manned towers? If so, then the providers in Europe, may longer term, benefit, from any cost increase across the pond.
One other point. I am also aware that a number of these fields have ILS, GPS approaches installed, and that pilots will shoot the approach, tower or not. IFR Unicom?
[URL fixed up - Peter]
No, I was interested in the training outfits, potentially having to alter their training schedules, which may in the long term increase the training costs. Please correct me, but I assume that for training, they require manned towers?
I'm not aware of any limitation on training that would result from contract towers being closed... There may be one, but not that I can think of! In the US there are no airport requirements to conduct training, other than the actual equipment needed (ILS for instance) and airports with much equipment typically have FAA staffed towers. Yes, IFR to unattended CTAF/Unicom airports is routinely done. For Private training, you could learn to fly using your back garden, taught by an unpaid FAA Certified Flight Instructor with no company affiliation.
At most of the airports involved, the tower operation is unnecessary and wasteful. Often the towers are asked for by the local government and since they don't meet traffic criteria, contract towers are provided. I think the local government subsidizes the tower.
We have about 5000 public use airports and only about 10% have a tower. Most of our airports have instrument procedures with RNAV, VOR, or NDB. ILS is common at many non towered airports. My airport does not have a tower. It has an ILS to runway 2 with DA of 200-1/2. The ILS is un-monitored. LPV with the same minimums to runway 2, 20 has a LPV with a DH of 250 - 7/8. Runway 2 has an approach light system - MALSR. The runway is 5500 feet long by 100 feet with a full length parallel taxiway. The only impact of not having a tower is that IFR approaches and departures are one in one out. We have Com access to the local radar controller on the ground for clearances, releases, and to report on the ground to cancel IFR flightplan. We have an ASOS for weather. We also have an ADSB tower on the field with broadcast NEXRAD weather and traffic to be displayed on on-board aircraft display. A tower would only have the effect of slowing down movements.
Most GA pilots don't care if there is a tower or not. Many weekend pilots are afraid of flying into an airport with a tower.
