doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (06/06/85)
The loss of public airports is bad enough, but the loss of non-tower
airports is getting critical. Ten years ago there were 12 civil
airports in the Phoenix area which were open to the public, and only
Phoenix-Sky Harbor International had a tower. Today, there are only
8 public airports, 5 of them with towers. Within the next five years,
the situation is expected to stabilize at 7 public airports, all with
towers.
As the total number of airports decrease, the number of operations goes
up at the remaining fields. And as each non-tower airport closes/goes
private/gets a tower, the NORDO traffic moves to the remaining non-tower
fields. So the traffic level at the non-tower fields becomes high enough
that they need towers, and...
I dunno what the owners of NORDO planes are going to do. But I reckon
I'll be finding out soon. Glendale Muni is expected to relocate to its
new 24-hour-tower site in a couple of years, and there's quite a large
contingent of antique and classic planes based at Glendale right now.
--
Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{ihnp4,seismo,decvax}!noao!terak!doug
^^^^^--- soon to be CalComp