Page 4 - Volume 17 Number 5

2 • TWIN & TURBINEMAY 2013editor’sbriefingLike most of you, I was brought up to manage finite resources in the most skillful way possible. Early on, I learned that there would always be unmet needs; the trick was to cover as many of the most important things as we could with the money available. When the money ran out, we did without.This situation was far from hopeless. We had faith that hard work, luck, and management would take us further down the list next year. Deferred gratification is the mark of a civilized society, I’ve been told more than once, which is the reason I’m still flying 30-year-old airplanes with some original avionics.So, the FAA budget cutbacks that are scheduled to be applied to ATC services, mostly contract-operated, low-activity control towers, are nothing new to those of us accustomed to making difficult decisions. That the government needs to stop overspending has long been apparent. It’s the where and how of it that leads to heated discussion. Some of the tower closures might be debatable.But, it’s no secret that General Aviation activity has been at a low ebb even longer than the general economic recession that started six years ago. There was a time when several FBOs vying for business on an airport would dispatch follow-me carts toward a stream of arriving airplanes, outfitted with attractive greeters ready to plop down a bit of red carpet to welcome deplaning occupants. In today’s world, the lone operator onthe field may be grateful to see the only aircraft that’s landed in the past hour.Thus, some of the control towers that have been kept open in hope of resurgence are probably an unjustifiable luxury. Others on the list of 149 sites the FAA wants to defund could be questioned. Of course, extracting pain to bring constituent pressure on recalcitrant legislators is a shrewd move. No doubt politics have already played a role, since the original enumeration was closer to 200 towers.Can we survive without our familiar voice greeting us with a “cleared to land”? Absolutely. I tell my non-flying friends that we would simply be going from tower-controlled airports to pilot-controlled airports. Picking up a clearance might become more difficult, and an automated weather report may lose the human augmentation. Doing without something we used to have is ever so much more painful than never having had it. But, we will survive, and we’ll hope for a brighter day, when tower transmitters come on again.What it will take is more cooperation among pilots. Without a referee on the field, we’re going to have to remember that landing aircraft have priority, that at least a truncated traffic pattern is safer than a straight-in, and that we should pay attention to the speed capabilities of the aircraft ahead and behind us. Road rage on the CTAF has no place in aviation; we’ve too much at stake to engage in belligerence. If the tower closures go forward, safety that used to be provided by the controller will be in our hands.LeRoy Cook, EditorDoing Without