Jose wrote:

This is not a job for the FAA. It's a job for pilots.

Indeed.

Put the same amount/mix of traffic at an untowered airport. Would it be
better or worse?

My club moved from TEB to CDW about the time I joined. TEB gets relatively
little student/pattern traffic (as it charges a landing fee), and the tower
has real RADAR. CDW gets a *lot* of student/pattern traffic, and the
"RADAR" is incredibly primitive (for one: no codes, just VFR vs. IFR; for
two: blind spots in the traffic pattern).

Many of the club members have indicated a strong dislike for the chaotic
nature of CDW. They're certainly right that the place is busier, and with
a greater number of inexperienced pilots, than TEB. But with a good
controller in the tower, it's still better than an untowered airport for
"sanity".

However, put a bad controller in place and it gets *much* worse *very*
quickly. There's nothing particular about a class D that causes a
controller to waste precious airtime...period.

Even w/o the stupidity of wasting airtime, controller skill makes a major
difference (and is probably the paramount variable by far). I was in the
pattern with about six or eight other planes one day, with others coming in
and leaving. A normal weekend day at CDW. It became a mess, as the
controller lost track of who was where.

A new controller took over, and in minutes the same planes were in a well
oiled dance (to mix metaphors {8^). That's with the same crappy RADAR and
the same mix of traffic.

- Andrew