FAA and Regs

Last week, the city of Spokane, Wash., went to court to try to prevent the FAA’s shutdown of an airport tower, and this week other cities are trying the same tactic. Lawsuits now have been filed by city officials in Bloomington, Ill., and the operators of three airports in Florida — Naples, Ormond Beach, and […]

A test program in Alaska to integrate the consumer tracking devices Spot and Spidertracks with FAA search-and-rescue has been successful, officials said last week. The Enhanced Special Reporting Service was tested for two years and now has been made an official option for all pilots flying VFR in Alaska. The technology could be a lifesaver […]

Texas will take over funding of air traffic control towers at 13 airports that will lose them to the federal government’s sequester cuts. The state’s department of transportation made the decision on Thursday but it won’t become official until the Texas Transportation Commission ratifies it. The commission is meeting in an emergency session next week […]

Thursday, Eclipse Aerospace earned an amended production certificate from the FAA, “authorizing the final assembly, test, and certification of the new production Eclipse 550” jet, the company announced. Earlier this month, Eclipse powered up the first truly new aircraft to roll out of its Albuquerque factory in nearly five years. The amended production certificate grants […]

Not every air traffic control tower slated for shutdown will stop operating at once, according to an FAA list posted online by AOPA on Monday. The first group of 24 towers will close on April 7, another 46 on April 21, and 79 on May 5. The Lakeland, Fla., tower will remain open until April […]

Although some pilots think closing towers at small general aviation airports may negatively impact flight safety and convenience, nearly half of them — about 45 percent — say they support the closings anyway and not even one in five believes the towers should remain open. And by overwhelming margins, AVweb readers told us that the […]

Although the tower at Lakeland Linder Regional Airport in Florida is on the FAA’s list for closure (so is Wittman Regional’s in Oshkosh) the facility will be manned as usual by FAA controllers through Sun ‘n Fun. Under the sequestration closure plan, Lakeland is among 149 towers being closed due to sequestration cuts and was […]

If the tower at the local airport was supposed to be closed but wasn’t it’s because someone convinced the FAA that closing it would pose a threat to national security. At least 24 towers that would normally have been closed under the mathematical limits set by the agency before sequestration took effect (fewer than 150,000 […]

The FAA will close 149 federal contract towers beginning April 7, in response to sequestration’s budget cuts, the agency announced Friday. The newly revised list is online here (PDF). The agency says closures will be phased in over a four-week period. At least 38 states are affected. Florida is one of the nation’s most populous […]

The FAA was expected to announce Monday which control towers will close due to federal budget cuts, but now that announcement has been delayed until Friday, March 22. The FAA plans to eliminate funding for as many as 232 towers, most of them run by contractors, but operators of the affected airports were invited to […]