Control towers at some small airports in Georgia — including Fulton’s Charlie Brown Field, Cobb’s McCollum Field and Gwinnett’s Briscoe Field — may close if automatic federal funding cuts go into place, federal officials say.
Tower closures wouldn’t mean the airports would shut down, as many operate without towers. But airport officials say losing controllers could lessen safety and efficiency.
The cuts scheduled for March 1 include a $600 million bite from the Federal Aviation Administration. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the agency is considering closing more than 100 control towers and furloughing almost all controllers for about one day per pay period – likely leading to flight delays because of understaffing.
Also on the list of control towers at risk are airports in Albany, Athens, Columbus and Macon. Hartsfield-Jackson International, the world’s busiest airport, is not at risk of losing its tower.
Karl Von Hagel, who manages McCollum Field, said his airport would operate as an uncontrolled field, as it already does at night.
“It will slow things down and it will decrease the margin of safety, but we’ll continue to operate as an airport,” he said. McCollum plans a new control tower, and Von Hagel said he is “not changing course yet, until something is made permanent.”
Gwinnett County spokesman Joe Sorenson said pilots also already land at Briscoe Field without tower guidance during some periods. Whether flights would decrease if the tower closes would be up to pilots, he said.
The budget cuts, known as “sequestration,” were created in the deal to raise the federal borrowing limit in 2011 to get Congress to make a long-term deficit reduction deal. Congress delayed the cuts by two months in the year-end “fiscal cliff” deal, but there is little movement on another last-minute resolution.
Republicans criticized LaHood for laying out the potential effects on aviation, saying the administration was “creating alarm” to sway the political battle.
