Splitting Toledo

This link is to a local news article about splitting Toledo Express tower/approach and moving the approach control to Cleveland.

The  spokesperson uses all the techniques of The Big Lie – deny reality, assert your own story, repeat often-

The FAA disagrees with the raised safety concerns, though, citing the fact that this switch is not a brand new endeavor but has been successfully used in other airports.

“The statement that talking to an air traffic controller in Cleveland and they can’t help you is misleading because air traffic control is already a remote operation throughout most of the country,” Elizabeth Isham Cory, spokeswoman for the FAA, said.

Nothing unusual here, move along. No story. Cory’s statement that ATC is already a remote operation in most of the country talks about enroute control, not terminal control, but there’s no way Joe SixPack and Hockey Mom are going to get that.

And once it’s accomplished in Canton, Mansfield, and Toledo this will be the justification for airports in other states. No problem, we’ve done it before.

Here’s another link to the Toledo story. In this article, Ms. Cory noted that Cleveland Hopkins already provides backup for Toledo Express.

“If Toledo went down today, Cleveland would take over,” she said. “No controller will work traffic for a particular area until he or she is trained and fully certified on that sector, which includes knowing all of the unique aspects of that airspace.”

In my experience there’s a huge difference between a controller who knows the airspace and lives in the environment, and a controller working a backup sector from a contingency plan because the system is compromised. I know which controller I’d want working if my family was flying.

The article also provides a link to LocalAirportsMatter.com , which is a new website that I had not heard about before. It looks like somebody else is paying attention to this. That’s a good thing.