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FAA will delay moving Boise TRACON

 

FAA will delay moving Boise TRACON

Software and safety concerns mean local air traffic controllers will stay put for now.

BY JOE ESTRELLA - jestrella@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Software and safety concerns mean local air traffic controllers will stay put for now.

Acting Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Lynne A. Osmus decided to postpone plans to move the Terminal Radar Approach Control system - or TRACON - to Salt Lake City after Idaho Democratic Rep. Walt Minnick voiced concerns Thursday about the move.
Minnick spokeswoman Kate Haas said the congressman also raised the issue of repeated delays in providing information requested by the Idaho Statesman under the Freedom of Information Act.
Minnick was traveling Friday and unavailable for comment.
The agency's original plan was to move the TRACON when the new tower at Boise Airport is commissioned in 2011.
A TRACON is the part of a three-tiered air traffic control system that ensures that departing planes are on course and at safe altitude, and that arriving traffic is properly positioned to land.
The FAA announced in 2006 that it wanted to move the Boise TRACON to Salt Lake City as part of a cost-cutting plan.
Mark Griffin, president of the local chapter of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said Osmus' decision to delay any action will give new FAA administrator Randy Bobbitt time to revisit the issue.
The controllers association has been fighting the FAA plan on the grounds that the software needed to allow a Salt Lake City-based controller to oversee Boise air space does not work and will require an expensive rewrite. Griffin said other expenses would include the cost of additional controllers, as well as the cost of running high-speed underground lines between Boise and Salt Lake City.
"I'm told the cost of those lines has become astronomical," Griffin said. "As a taxpayer, why would you support the FAA's efforts to increase its costs?"
Griffin said public safety also would be at risk because a controller in Salt Lake City would not know the geography of the Treasure Valley. That knowledge has repeatedly allowed local controllers to help pilots in trouble, he said.
"There has been more than one occasion when a knowledge of the area has allowed a controller to save the life of a local pilot," Griffin said.

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