DENVER — An aviation expert said protocols are in place at Denver International Airport to manage workloads and ensure safety despite a national shortage of air traffic controllers.
This week's mid-air collision outside of Washington has brought that years-long shortage to the forefront.
A recent report by the Federal Aviation Administration obtained by the Associated Press showed that one air traffic controller was working two positions when the crash happened. However, it's not known if that contributed to the crash in any way.
Denver International Airport is the sixth busiest airport in the world, so air traffic controllers have plenty of work. Many other small airports in Colorado also rely on that tower to function.
According to FAA data, Denver’s air traffic control tower currently has 34 controllers and is nearly 83% staffed.
Aviation expert Chad Kendall told Denver7 that traveler safety is paramount despite the many moving parts.
“We've got a lot going on here as far as air traffic and the responsibilities that air traffic control has,” said Kendall.
Denver’s air traffic control tower is a level 12 facility, one of the nation’s busiest.
“It is a busy airport. [It's a] very complex airspace environment, just given the nature of Denver International itself, given all of the other outlying airports around the Denver national airspace,” he explained.
Some of those smaller airports have their own towers, while others rely on the Denver's tower to coordinate their airspace.
Take Eagle County Regional Airport, for instance. Just this week, it faced a potential temporary staffing gap at its tower related to the transition of its air traffic control tower management contract.
Airport officials advised that the transition could temporarily reduce tower staffing starting Saturday, when the new management contract went into effect. However, an airport spokesperson told Denver7 that the tower was staffed on Saturday with no impacts.
If it had not, the work would have been assigned to Denver’s air traffic controllers, who are over a hundred miles away.
“There are no safety concerns with Denver's ATC controlling the [Eagle County Regional Airport's] airspace. This arrangement is already in place at other Colorado airports without their own air traffic control towers,” the airport spokesperson told Denver7. “The only expected impact would be increased separation between aircraft landing and taking off at EGE. This separation could cause some delays during peak times.”
Kendall said that even though it is more of a workload for air traffic controllers, protocols are in place to ensure that it doesn’t jeopardize traveler safety.
“When we have outlying airports that need additional services, Denver Center’s larger facilities help to take over some of that load off. It may change in terms of staffing levels and the need for additional controllers. It may require additional coordination between controlling facilities on who's managing each airport,” he said.
The FAA has struggled to keep up with rising commercial flights amid a years-long controller shortage.
Kendall, an aviation professor at MSU Denver, said its university programs are committed to training more future air traffic controllers amid the shortage and reiterated the safety of taking to the skies.
“It's a normal response right now to be anxious to, you know, have concerns about travel,” said Kendall. “There are qualified air traffic controllers and control towers and other facilities around the nation that want to keep operations done safely, that there have been thousands of operations that have occurred since the accident happened in Washington D.C. that have departed and gotten to their destination safely.”
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