FAA Control tower Abandoned

"beavis" wrote in message
...

There's your answer. If the tower is closed, there's no-one to issue
RVR reports; the ASOS won't do it. Further, the charts specifically
say that Cat II (and III) minimums are NA when the tower is closed.

With no operating tower, they require Cat I minimums, which are 1/2
mile for both 05 and 23.

So what they said was true: They couldn't land because there was no-one
in the tower.


No, what they said was false: They couldn't land because the weather was
below minimums for all available approaches.

Roy Smith wrote:
Newps wrote:

I kept the tower open an extra hour or so


Does that mean the Class D Airspace was in existence an extra hour too?

That was before they invented the lettered airspace. We were a control
zone back then.


What happens if I dutifully read my AFD and discover that the tower (and
the associated CDAS) closes at midnight, so I figure when I arrive at 12:30
I don't need to talk to anybody.

I fly in, enter the pattern, land, and taxi to the ramp without bothering
to self-announce. Have I broken any regulations?

The weather was IFR so yeah, you broke some regs. In reality we would
work around you should that ever happen in VFR weather. No rules would
have been busted.

When we closed the tower we put the lights on pilot control, the
standard 3,5 and 7 clicks thing. If I see you landing without talking
to me I might toggle the lights off and on to get your attention.




Roy Smith wrote:

Does that mean the Class D Airspace was in existence an extra hour too?
What happens if I dutifully read my AFD and discover that the tower (and
the associated CDAS) closes at midnight, so I figure when I arrive at 12:30
I don't need to talk to anybody.

I fly in, enter the pattern, land, and taxi to the ramp without bothering
to self-announce. Have I broken any regulations?


In article ,
Robert Chambers wrote:


You'd still try and get the ATIS before you got there wouldn't you?


Maybe. If I didn't expect the tower to be open, I wouldn't expect there to
be anything interesting to hear on the ATIS so maybe I wouldn't have
bothered.

I probably would have self-announced on the CTAF (in which case the tower
would hear me and let me know they're still home), but that wasn't the
question. I'm asking a nit-picking silly "let's dissect the FARs on
usenet" kind of hypothetical question. If I just flew in and landed
without talking to anybody, would I have broken any rules?

Roy Smith wrote:


I don't know, but you still haven't answered my question.

You fly to an airport, the tower is open, you don't think the tower is
open and you land anyway?

You've entered class D without establishing communications 91.129(c)1
then you've just landed without a clearance 91.129(i)

So yes you've been naughty and will most likely be asked to call the tower.

"Robert Chambers" wrote in message
. com...

You fly to an airport, the tower is open, you don't think the tower is
open and you land anyway?

You've entered class D without establishing communications 91.129(c)1 then
you've just landed without a clearance 91.129(i)

So yes you've been naughty and will most likely be asked to call the
tower.


You can't enter Class D airspace if it's outside the hours the Class D
airspace is in effect.

Steven P. McNicoll wrote:
"Robert Chambers" wrote in message
. com...

You fly to an airport, the tower is open, you don't think the tower is
open and you land anyway?

You've entered class D without establishing communications 91.129(c)1 then
you've just landed without a clearance 91.129(i)

So yes you've been naughty and will most likely be asked to call the
tower.



You can't enter Class D airspace if it's outside the hours the Class D
airspace is in effect.



So by that logic, for example if PVD's tower controllers said "ok SWA
1234 we will stick around for another 30 minutes" - SWA 1234 still
wouldn't be allowed to shoot the CAT II approach because the tower was
not in operation because it was outside the normal operating hours?

"Robert Chambers" wrote in message
. com...

So by that logic, for example if PVD's tower controllers said "ok SWA 1234
we will stick around for another 30 minutes" - SWA 1234 still wouldn't be
allowed to shoot the CAT II approach because the tower was not in
operation because it was outside the normal operating hours?


No. Airspace is regulatory, facility operating hours are not. For the 5
1/2 minutes PVD tower was in operation after the published operating hours
of the tower/TRACON and the Class C airspace there was a towered field in a
Class E surface area.

Steven P. McNicoll wrote:

I thought there were only two SWA flights. If a SWA flight landed at PVD at
11:57 and another SWA flight returned to BWI before it was past Manhattan
then what SWA flight missed an approach at PVD?

These are the two flights that didn't land at PVD:
SWA2020 was flying from MCO to PVD, scheduled to land at 11:44pm
SWA946 was flying from BWI to PVD, scheduled to land around 10:20pm
The first missed the approach about two minutes after midnight, and the
second turned around about halfway there, around 17 to 19 minutes after
midnight. The other flight I mentioned, SWA 1729 from LAS, I believe
actually landed at PVD at 11:51pm.

All this is from FlightAware (you may have to register to view the
links, I'm not sure):
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/S...357Z/KBWI/KBWI
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/S...157Z/KMCO/KPVD
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/S...303Z/KLAS/KPVD

Steven P. McNicoll wrote:

I thought there were only two SWA flights.

Here's the list of SWA flights into PVD according to their printed
schedule (starting at 9pm):
9:00pm from TPA
9:55pm from BWI
10:30pm from PHX
10:45pm from BWI
11:05pm from MCO
11:25pm from MDW
11:35pm from LAS
It seems that at least three of these were running late that night.

On Wed, 17 May 2006 19:39:21 +0000 (UTC), (Roy Smith)
wrote:

In article ,
Blowinginthewind wrote:

FAA Control tower Abandoned

I think this is a poor choice of words.
Plane landing after hours finds tower closed might be more like it.

Southwest Planes Turn Around Minutes From Green
Southwest Says Planes Could Not Land Without Air Traffic Control


Here the tower closes at 11:00PM local.

Ignoring the the sarcastic comments, and somewhat puzzled by why the
tower would be abandoned, I'm curious what prevented the flight from
landing. Is there something in SW's op-specs which requires an
operating control tower to land?

Must be SW's policy


It also seems odd that they would turn around and go back to
Baltimore. It would seem to make more sense to land someplace close
(like BDL) and put the pax on a bus to their final destination.

Probably another SW policy or pilot had a date that night.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com