Control Tower Placement

[citabriapilot]

What determines if an airport gets a tower? Is it number of operations per day, city/county requests, airline requests?

I'm assuming its NOT operations per day because I have seen places in the northwest (PDT, IDA, TWF, PIH, EKO) that all have towers (mostly contract) but are usually dead as a doornail. Out in FL I've been in and out of airports with NO tower that were so busy with GA training and corporate stuff that they seemed like JFK compared to these towered places in the northwest. Just curious how low operation airports afford or justify having the tower when the busy places don't?

[daveatc]

Originally Posted by citabriapilot

What determines if an airport gets a tower? Is it number of operations per day, city/county requests, airline requests?

I'm assuming its NOT operations per day because I have seen places in the northwest (PDT, IDA, TWF, PIH, EKO) that all have towers (mostly contract) but are usually dead as a doornail. Out in FL I've been in and out of airports with NO tower that were so busy with GA training and corporate stuff that they seemed like JFK compared to these towered places in the northwest. Just curious how low operation airports afford or justify having the tower when the busy places don't?

A lot of it has to do with the county where the airport is located. How do they feel about the airport, the involvment of the tenants with the airport board and their efforts to get a tower, traffic complexity (not just volume). In the end, it all comes down to the $$$. Can the county make money off of having a tower there. A lot of it is also sort of grand-fathered in, for lack of a better term. Around the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area there are so many small airports that were once used for military training in some way, so they had a tower there. When they went public-use, they just kept them on and contracted them out. In the end though, I think it's $$$.