A legislative effort to spare 189 contract control towers from closing next month as part of automatic federal budget cuts failed when the Senate refused to take up the issue. According to a story at Bloomberg.com, Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) proposed the amendment, saying he was seeking to protect “the safety of Americans.” He briefly held up a vote on the bill to fund the government through Sept. 30 because an amendment to shield the towers from the spending reductions wasn’t in the package.
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“Never let a crisis go to waste”
Just checked the FAA budget for 2013, it’s 15,000 million dollars. Let’s see, 600 million is less than 5% of their budget. I cant imagine that 5% in waste cant be found somewhere without closing one control tower.
This is politics in it’s most evil form, these people want fatal accidents for political gain.
Actually, 1/2 of the towers in this country could be closed and nobody would notice the difference.
I’m sure some towers are needed; however, there are a number which are not needed. For example, Independence, KS is a good example of an airport not needing a tower. I flew for a week in early March. Monday through Friday during day light hours the tower is manned. Very little traffic was in the area during the time. Saturday morning for my last flight in training and departure later in the day back to New England, the amount of traffic equaled what I had experienced for the whole previous five days. No one was manning the tower and traffic worked together with no compromise to safety. Independence, KS could easily do without a tower.