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The control tower at the Double Eagle II airport in Albuquerque will be closed due to federal budget cuts. It’s one of 149 control towers closing nationwide. (Pat Vasquez-Cunningham/Journal)
Albuquerque’s Double Eagle II airport will indefinitely lose its air traffic control tower next month, officials announced Friday.
The airport has fallen victim to sequestration, or deep cuts in federal spending. The Federal Aviation Administration is cutting $637 million, starting with the closure of 149 federal contract towers around the country. In New Mexico, that includes Double Eagle II and the Santa Fe Municipal Airport towers. The closures will take place over four weeks beginning April 7 and will likely be permanent, an FAA spokeswoman said.
Jim Hinde, director of Albuquerque’s aviation department, said Double Eagle II, about eight miles north of Interstate 40 off Paseo del Volcan, operated without a control tower until the one it has opened in December 2008. The airport opened in the early 1980s.
“What it does is it means the pilots are going to have to coordinate amongst themselves a lot more than they have been,” Hinde said. He said pilots will communicate via radio with one another.
Double Eagle caters mostly to private planes but also sees a lot of military traffic, Hinde said. The traffic control tower does not keep a schedule of landings and takeoffs, but does help planes land once they are in the vicinity. It is operated by Connecticut-based RVA Robinson Aviation, a private company that employs six people at Double Eagle. It is under contract with the FAA.
Traffic has declined since last year, Hinde said. In January 2012, the airport had 6,378 takeoffs and landings. For the same month this year, that number was 4,889.
The Santa Fe Municipal Airport handled more than 77,000 flights in fiscal year 2011, the last available data on its website.
“Santa Fe is the state capital and a major hub for business and tourism. The airport is vital to the economy of Santa Fe, and the entire state, and vital to the national interest,” Mayor David Coss said in a news release. “The FAA decision to include the Santa Fe Municipal Airport on the Contract Tower Closure List is disappointing and makes no sense. We are going to do everything we can to reverse this decision.”
— This article appeared on page C1 of the Albuquerque Journal
-- Email the reporter at agalvan@abqjournal.com. Call the reporter at 505-823-3843
