FAA to close 149 air traffic towers, senator calls for using untapped research money to save them

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

The Federal Aviation Administration announced Friday that it will close 149 air traffic control towers, in a move one lawmaker said was akin to "removing stop lights and stop signs from our roads."

That lawmaker, Republican Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, also claims the FAA could save the towers by tapping into millions of dollars in unspent FAA research money.

Yet the FAA moved forward Friday with plans to shut down the air traffic control facilities, describing them as a necessary cutback due to the sequester.

"These were very tough decisions," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a written statement.

The cuts will affect small airports starting April 7. The closures will not force the shutdown of any of those airports, but pilots will be left to coordinate takeoffs and landings among themselves over a shared radio frequency with no help from ground controllers under procedures that all pilots are trained to carry out. The FAA decided to keep open 24 towers that were on the original list of possible closures.

"We will work with the airports and the operators to ensure the procedures are in place to maintain the high level of non-towered airports," FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in a statement.

But the plan has raised concerns about the impact on safety and the potential financial effect on communities that rely on airports as key economic engines for attracting businesses and tourists.

"The administration's decision to shutter these air traffic control towers is short-sighted and dangerous," Moran said in a statement "Closing control towers is equivalent to removing stop lights and stop signs from our roads. It is clear that this administration is putting its top-line message, that spending cannot be cut without severe consequences, before the safety and well-being of Americans."

Moran is pushing an amendment to take $50 million from "unobligated FAA research and capital funds" from past spending bills and use that to save the air traffic control towers. The amendment did not receive a vote when proposed as part of the recently passed 2013 stopgap spending bill -- it's unclear whether it could get a vote Friday as an amendment to the 2014 budget resolution. However, any amendment to the 2014 budget package would have no effect this year, and the senator is considering introducing the proposal as a stand-alone bill.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association also blasted the decision announced Friday, while spreading the blame between Congress and the administration.

"The closure of these air traffic control towers will reduce the overall margin of safety of our entire aviation system," association president President Paul Rinaldi said. "Ultimately, the partisan posturing in Washington that led to sequestration is the reason for today's decision and its destructive effects on aviation. The FAA made a bad situation worse by not utilizing a well-thought-out process for evaluating the value of air traffic control towers before ordering their closure."

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Flying blind.

[Pepper]

Obama's throwing 200 million dollars around, why not use it?

[Valin]