Easton air traffic tower celebrates one million operations

EASTON — In its 17th year, the Easton air traffic control tower reached a monumental mark: one million operations.

A Cessna Skyhawk piloted by Preston Hull and flight instructor Nyck Shirkey tallied the milestone number when it flew out of the airport Saturday afternoon.

The aircraft is owned by Michele Anstatt, who was the first pilot to receive service when the tower opened in 2007.

The milestone is less about the number and more about the tower’s impact on the Easton community, Easton Airport Manager Micah Risher said.

“Having the air traffic control tower be the veil that increases safety, it’s huge,” said Risher, who delivered the tower’s first transmission on Nov. 14, 2007. “It multiplies everything we do. Safety is our highest priority. Every decision we make has to be viewed through the lens of safety.”

On Wednesday, air traffic controllers Jacob Hacker and Lars Hugle manned the tower with less than 600 operations to go until the millionth. Risher said the two work “in tandem,” with one responsible for aircraft coming in and the other controlling what happens on the ground below.

Scott Stiefel, the airport’s air traffic manager, said the tower’s biggest challenge is communication with pilots. Many of the pilots that come through Easton Airport are trainees or not used to flying into an airport with a control tower.

“They’re used to working at airports without an active control tower, so the procedures are entirely different,” Stiefel said. “And they’re just not used to having someone issue instructions and then complying.”

The work of those in the tower boosts the local economy, Risher added. “You have a safe airport, people want to fly here, businesses want to relocate here, jets will come here,” he said.

The tower, which is open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, is one of 264 towers under the Federal Aviation Administration Contract Tower Program. It means the tower is a federal operation, with its employees contracted from the Midwest Air Traffic Control Service.

‘EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED’Constructing the FAA-approved tower in 2007 took the vision of Mike Henry, the airport’s manager from 2003 to 2018. Risher said Henry led the airport’s “lightning quick” construction of the tower with the FAA, which was the fastest ever seen in the contract tower program.

Risher noted that changes in the Easton Airport’s usual traffic count stemmed from industry changes after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“There was something that was called an air defense identification zone that was put around D.C., a lot of restricted airspace,” Risher said. “That ended about 10 miles north of Easton, which meant all of a sudden, planes started coming to Easton instead of the other airports closer to D.C.”

National figures such as then-Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were flying into the airport. Henry recognized the need to adjust and build an air traffic tower.

At its outset, the Easton tower was analog-based. Almost 17 years later, Risher says “everything has changed,” with computers providing radar and weather data that improves the tower’s ability to provide information and help flights depart and arrive safely.

A dearth of air traffic control employees is another area of change, one that Stiefel sees as particularly challenging. Stiefel, who has been an air traffic controller since 1976 and managing the Easton tower since 2018, said the air traffic control industry is “losing people left and right.”

“Until we figure out some way to get more people interested and trained, we’re going to be short handed,” Stiefel said. “And that’s across the board, that’s every air traffic control facility in the country.”

Despite state-of-the-art technology and a changing workforce, a lot has remained, Risher said. As Hacker picked up a pair of binoculars to locate an aircraft preparing for landing, Risher pointed out the process of the job isn’t much different.

“If you see how Jacob is doing his job right now, this is the same way we did it in 1950,” Risher said. “This is literally, grab the binoculars, look out the window, see the aircraft, track them on paper flight progress strips.”

It’s become a balance of “traditional methods of control,” and enhanced data tools to complete the job more effectively, Risher said.

“These guys do an amazing job day in and day out to keep the airport safe and keep the community safe,” Risher said. “There’s things they do all the time that people don’t even realize.”