The FAA has informed the staff at Leesburg Executive Airport (KJYO) in Virginia that it is canceling the Remote Tower Program, which has been providing air traffic control services at the airport since June 2015.
ATC services will end at the airport on June 14, 2023.
The decision wasn’t actually made by the FAA, but by SAAB Inc., the company that designed and operated the remote tower. On Feb. 7, 2023, the company notified the FAA that it was terminating its pursuit of FAA System Design Approval for the prototype remote tower.
“The FAA had no role in that decision,” agency officials told officials with the town of Leesburg.
Leesburg Executive Airport was the first municipal airport in the country to implement a remote tower program through the FAA’s Remote Tower Pilot program in 2015.
The remote tower system developed by Saab uses high-definition cameras and displays, maneuverable optical and infrared cameras, microphones, and a signal-light-gun to provide data directly to air traffic controllers at a remote tower center located just outside of the airport property. Controllers at the remote tower center have the same tools as at other traditional air traffic control towers, but use live video, radar, and other tools instead of direct vision to detect and direct air traffic at the busy general aviation airport, town officials explained.
Since the airport’s remote tower was deemed operationally viable by the FAA in 2021, contract controllers in Leesburg’s tower have provided air traffic services to more than 174,000 day, night, and all-weather takeoffs and landings at the airport.
From the start of the program in 2015, airport traffic has grown more than 25% and the airport has added an additional flight school, a second FBO, and a U.S. Customs office, town officials added.
“We at the FAA understand and appreciate your frustration with the decision to cease remote tower services at JYO, but for safety reasons, there was no other choice to be made,” FAA officials told town officials. “JYO has a solid safety track record operating as a non-towered airport and we expect that to continue.”
FAA officials added that the agency is “committed to bringing remote towers into the National Airspace System, but it must be done safety, in accordance with the agency’s primary mission.”
Town officials echo that safety is also their primary concern at the airport.
“Leesburg has worked cooperatively with both the FAA and SAAB for many years as our primary focus regarding air traffic control is on safety and ensuring that those services remain at the airport as they do today,” said Airport Director Scott Coffman. “With more than 75,000 takeoffs and landings each year, we believe air traffic control services are necessary for safe operations and growth at the Leesburg Executive Airport.”
Since learning of this decision by the FAA, town and airport officials have been working with the town’s federal legislators — Rep. Jennifer Wexton and Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, to “ensure that Leesburg Executive Airport remains a towered airport,” they reported.
“Our goals are to find an interim solution for providing ATC services until either a Remote Tower System is certified or a physical tower is constructed and identify funding and an accelerated development schedule for the construction of a physical tower,” they said.
Town officials report they have had “several productive and promising discussions with FAA officials” since learning of the planned cancelation of ATC services.
“At this time, the Town is encouraged and hopeful that a solution allowing the uninterrupted continuation of ATC services at Leesburg Executive Airport will be found,” they said.
They ask pilots who use the airport — and others in the aviation community — to contact the FAA and elected officials to “express your support for continued ATC services at Leesburg Executive Airport.”
This story is more than a little inaccurate, not because GA News did something wrong, but because the FAA was more than disingenuous in their news release. I won’t call them liars, but calling them disingenuous is disrespectful to the word disingenuous. Note to reporters: Don’t accept the FAA’s press release or letters at face value in the future.
The root cause of this problem was NOT Saab Sensis, it was the FAA changing development & documentation standards after over 5 years of testing, and then surprising both the rTower vendors. The FAA forced this change, NOT the vendor. This is a bureaucratic snit-fit between the NextGen Program Office and the Technical Operations Directorate in Atlantic City.
Here’s how professional these guys are: They assigned certification of an air traffic control tower system to an office in TechOps that had never done a tower, and in fact proudly proclaimed on their website (until they got assigned this project) that they DON’T do tower equipment. They refused to acknowledge the prior approvals of this equipment in multiple other ICAO partner countries, refused to accept this equipment as ‘commercial off the shelf (COTS)’, and refused to accept either vendors prior documentation. After 5 years of testing, they demanded that both vendors bring new setups to Atlantic City and undergo another 3-5 years of testing, which will cost the vendors millions of dollars.
This – after spending over $30M of YOUR tax money on a test to prove up technology that’s already approved in multiple other countries and is controlling traffic today.
More Stupidity: In point of fact, Saab Sensis agreed to continue supporting the Leesburg rTower, but the FAA pulled the plug on short notice claiming that it was safer to shut down the rTower than it was to continue air traffic services at an airport that has almost 100,00 operations per year, inside the SFRA, with a mix of corporate jets, military aircraft, and five flight schools. That’s FAA logic for you.
More disingenuity: “JYO has a solid safety track record operating as a non-towered airport and we expect that to continue.” JYO traffic has increased by almost 50% since the tower began operation. This is the dumbest statement I think I’ve ever heard from the FAA, and I’ve heard some whoppers in my 45 years of flying.
JYO tried to get a tower over 10 years ago, and ran into the FAA’s undeclared, secret ‘moratorium’ on contract towers. The Town’s decision to support the rTower project was based on promises from the FAA NextGen Program Office that if the rTower was viable, it could stay. Unfortunately, there is NO accountability for government employees.
This debacle is solely and completely the FAA’s fault. The vendors can take some of the blame, because they should have known the FAA would screw this up in the end.
Thanks for the backstory.