Control Tower Hours Adjustments

I fly out the LA are in SoCal and almost every Delta shuts down at 5 or 6PM. Every night flight around here is on CTAF.
 
My home field, cmi, is one. I forgot about it until I got in the plane last Saturday morning, and instead of an atis recording, there was an automated awos. I did check notams, but assumed I wouldn't be departing before they opened.

Anyway, we're a class c, and I did all my training here, so I'm very used to talking to ground, tower, & approach. It felt very, very wrong announcing my intentions on the tower frequency and taking off without permission.

The other club planes are based at bmi, and they didn't get adjusted. I was thinking it was due to being a contract tower, but FedEx has facilities there, so that could be it, too.
 
When I looked at the numbers for the airports that are the busiest in current times, something stuck out to me - this has NOTHING to do with traffic volume.

This has everything to do with going after the locality pay of high COL area controllers. KMYF is the 18th busiest airport in the country right now - hours cut to 8-6 instead of 6-9. KCMA is like 34th. 7-5 instead of 7-9. Yet, you have po dunk level 5 towers staying open
 
nrm2430 said:
I fly out the LA are in SoCal and almost every Delta shuts down at 5 or 6PM. Every night flight around here is on CTAF.
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My point is that the change in hours is different.

KMMU is under the NYC Bravo, and was open at least until 11:00PM local if not 24 hours until the recent change.

Are the airports where you fly were already closing at 5, or is that a change in the past 2 weeks?
 
Justin M said:
My point is that the change in hours is different.

KMMU is under the NYC Bravo, and was open at least until 11:00PM local if not 24 hours until the recent change.

Are the airports where you fly were already closing at 5, or is that a change in the past 2 weeks?
Click to expand...
This is all within the last few weeks. Towers before this were open till 9pm local time or later.
 
Normal hours here were 7a-9p, now 11a-7p. I gotta work on my radio calls, dayum. KLAF Class D.
 
For my field it wasn't a reduction in hours but consolidation of frequencies. CD was often combined with ground, but on Saturday CD, ground, and tower was all on tower. Definitely caused about 5-10 mins longer on the ground having to wait a little bit longer to get clearances. Doesn't help that one runway was under construction and some taxiways were closed so there was only one direction flow.

If it's on the hobbs it counts, though!
 
Keeping the controllers to a minimum will insure the system works in the long run.
 
FAA data shows MYF 36th YTD or 43rd for March & April.
 
Those numbers are strictly aircraft movements straight from the FAA OPSNET Air Traffic Activity Data System; no passenger anything. Top 50 towers YTD last/current year:

1 ORD 230,003 230,553
2 ATL 224,273 225,732
3 DFW 188,293 189,971
4 LAX 168,988 174,280
5 DEN 165,237 166,014
6 CLT 157,010 158,954
7 DVT 156,825 158,796
8 PHX 128,220 137,250
9 LAS 127,881 133,339
10 IAH 122,296 123,717
11 EWR 108,002 122,266
12 MIA 114,071 116,889
13 FFZ 113,185 115,383
14 SEA 112,078 112,904
15 JFK 106,805 110,420
16 SFO 109,146 110,366
17 BOS 102,086 105,191
18 SLC 97,820 102,798
19 MCO 102,476 102,714
20 MSP 101,224 102,686
21 DTW 100,243 100,724
22 SFB 99,893 100,158
23 LGA 87,248 98,300
24 PHL 95,430 96,901
25 FLL 90,140 94,760
26 APA 89,500 90,824
27 DCA 76,870 90,466
28 DAB 87,575 88,119
29 IWA 85,845 87,671
30 LGB 83,192 87,643
31 HWO 79,182 83,247
32 HNL 80,686 80,764
33 VNY 65,941 79,642
34 CHD 78,171 79,130
35 SNA 76,427 78,883
36 MYF 76,358 78,788
37 VRB 75,410 76,058
38 IAD 73,930 75,766
39 TMB 71,939 72,872
40 BWI 65,822 69,042
41 MEM 67,714 68,746
42 SDL 66,205 68,334
43 DAL 60,588 67,883
44 SAN 58,702 67,703
45 PDX 58,041 67,192
46 CNO 63,211 66,366
47 TEB 36,333 66,319
48 TPA 63,515 65,804
49 ANC 62,224 64,280
50 PMP 49,528 63,348
51 PUB 62,287
 
That doesn't reflect strictly the current traffic during the pandemic
 
No, if you drop Jan-Mar it's like 24 for the month of April.
 
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