City Council to weigh options in April for future operations

Less than 48 hours before the Georgetown Municipal Airport's air traffic control tower was set to close April 7 because of federal budget cuts, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it would delay tower closures until June 15.

According to an FAA news release, the decision to delay closures was announced April 5 as a way to give the agency additional time to resolve legal challenges related to the closures.

"The FAA will stop funding all 149 towers on June 15 and will close the facilities unless the airports decide to continue operations as a nonfederal contract tower," the April 5 release said.

The Texas Transportation Commissioners proposed a temporary funding agreement March 28, which was approved April 4. Under the agreement, the Texas Department of Transportation would have funded 90 percent of the Georgetown tower's operating expenses for 90 days.

"This is good news; we appreciate the federal government taking the time to re-evaluate its decision," TxDOT spokeswoman Veronica Beyer said. "The funding approved by the commission [April 4] is available to use if necessary."

Georgetown City Council approved the agreement April 5 at a special meeting.

"We're going to get together as a city and review what our options are," Georgetown Municipal Airport Manager Sarah Hinton said.

If no other agreement is reached, the city could initiate the agreement with TxDOT on June 15, Georgetown Transportation Services Director Ed Polasek said.

According to city staff, funding tower staff is believed to cost more than $600,000 per year to keep the tower open 14 hours a day, seven days a week with six controllers.

The sequester

The Georgetown airport was one of 149 airports throughout the nation that lost funding for its contracted air traffic control tower after federal budget cuts known as the sequester were enacted.

The proposed cuts were announced in early March as part of a plan for the FAA to meet the agency's $637 million in cuts under sequestration, according to a news release from the FAA.

"We heard from communities across the country about the importance of their towers, and these were very tough decisions," U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a news release. "Unfortunately we are faced with a series of difficult choices that we have to make to reach the required cuts under sequestration."

The FAA, which contracts the staff in the towers, announced its decision to cut funding to the affected airports March 22.

"[The FAA] didn't clearly research what they did before they did it," Hinton said. "Normally we have to perform all these options before we make changes, and they just jumped in and cut."

The San Marcos Municipal Airport is also being impacted by sequestration, San Marcos Aviation Manager Stephen Alexander said. Both the San Marcos and Georgetown airports serve as relievers to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport for general aviation traffic.

"Municipalities are really struggling with a financial burden that they did not anticipate or budget for. It puts a strain on successfully managing your airport and encouraging additional traffic," Alexander said. "Nationwide, airports weren't notified until early March. So in less than a month, we've gone from business as usual to you have three weeks to decide what you are going to do."

Towered vs. non-towered

The Georgetown airport averages 186 operations—takeoffs and landings—per day, according to airport staff. On its busiest day in 2013, the airport had more than 400 operations, Air Traffic Manager Shannon Thomas said. In 2012, the tower oversaw more than 68,000 operations.

"We're there to provide a service and keep it safe," Thomas said. "We're like firemen. We don't get paid for what we do; we get paid for what we can do, and we do it when airplanes are there. I work with airplanes all day long, and when we are gone, it's going to be iffy from time to time, but that is the nature of the beast in [non-towered operations]."

Thomas said the majority of the time, operations will run smoothly, but the opportunity for accidents could increase without air traffic controllers.

Prior to the tower opening in 2007, the airport saw at least one midair collision. One of the two pilots involved in the incident was severely injured; however, both made full recoveries.

"Safety is the No. 1 thing," Hinton said, adding that if the tower were closed, the airport would revert to operating as a non-towered airport. "You have the issues of the different speeds of aircraft and mix of aircraft. The tower normally separates the traffic for you."

Without the tower, Hinton said the airport is likely to lose traffic from larger and corporate jets that require traffic control towers to land for insurance purposes, and fuel sales and other businesses could also be affected by the tower's closure.

More than 20 businesses, including three flight schools, operate at the airport.

"It's a safety issue, but it's also an economic issue when we have three flight schools at the airport and they rely on a towered landing for some of their training exercises," Polasek said. "So they are going to have to go get in the queue at Austin-Bergstrom [International Airport] to do some of their training. Getting in the queue at the Austin airport between all the [commercial] jets to practice touch-and-go landings with a tower doesn't make any sense."

City Council could hear more about the airport at its April 23 meeting, including options to continue operations or close the tower if a permanent funding source cannot be found, Polasek said.

According to the city's agreement with the FAA, however, closing the tower permanently may not be an option, he said.

The city's agreement includes a 10-year provision that may require the city—in the absence of federal funding—to pay for the tower's operations until 2017; however, Polasek said the city's legal department is reviewing the agreement.

Other options to keep the tower open could include the city extending the more than $600,000 contract as-is, seeking other vendors or the city staffing and operating the tower with its own employees, Hinton said.