Phoenix control tower given seal of approval
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given its backing to a construction project that will improve passenger safety at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
The FAA has branded the new control tower at the country's fifth-busiest airport "a great job", reports The Arizona Republic.
The $83 million project was commissioned because the shorter tower currently being used has blind spots that could have caused accidents, Warren Meehan, the FAA's air-traffic manager at the airport, told the paper.
The new tower will stand at 326 feet, 125 feet higher than the old tower.
Bobby Sturgell, Deputy Administrator at the FAA, who flew in from Washington, D.C. to see how the venture was coming along, said he was "very happy".
"Looks like the team has done a great job," he said of the state-of-the-art tower, which is expected to be operational by November.
Officials agreed that the increased visibility, which will allow air-traffic controllers to make visual as well as radio contact with airplanes, would decrease the likelihood of taxiing accidents or collisions with ground vehicles.
Sky Harbor served more than 41 million passengers in 2005 and logged 550,000 plus take-offs and landings, according to Department of Transportation figures.
The tower is to be part of a renewed period of growth at the Phoenix terminal (see Desert dynamo: more improvements for Phoenix), with air transport movement expected to increase to 670,000 take-offs and landings by 2015.
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