U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) recently urged the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to keep Air Traffic Control Terminal Radar Approach Control Facilities (ATC TRACON) open at two New York airports.
The National Facilities Realignment and Consolidation Report recommended that the FAA relocate TRACON operations from Greater Binghamton Airport in Jackson City and Elmira Corning Regional Airport in Horseheads to Scranton-Wilkes Barre Airport in Pennsylvania where they would be controlled remotely.
Local control ATC towers would remain in New York. TRACON towers manage airspace outside of the local control perimeter.
“The Binghamton and Elmira-Corning airports are invaluable assets to the Southern Tier,” Gillibrand said. “It would be a detrimental loss to the region if the FAA were to follow through on the recent recommendations to relocate vital ATC operations to Pennsylvania. This would put good Southern Tier jobs at risk and would also result in the loss of regional expertise that our local air controllers have built over the years. Binghamton and Elmira-Corning’s air controllers keep our air space safe, and I am urging the FAA to reconsider this consolidation.”
If operations are moved to Pennsylvania, Binghamton and Elmira-Corning’s air controllers will lose their jobs, resulting in a $1 million annual loss in local salaries.