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The head of the Federal Aviation Administration praised the opening of Northwest Arkansas National Airport’s new traffic control tower Wednesday for contributing to the modernization of the nation’s airspace.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, who joined U.S. Rep. Steve Womack and state lawmakers at the tower’s opening, said “the need to modernize is fundamental” because of increased airspace activity.
“We’re going to have drones and advanced air mobility and supersonic and daily cadence on space launches,” Bedford said. “We have to build a mass that’s scalable, secure and reliable.”
The new 145-foot-tower is nearly three times as tall as its predecessor, which was meant to be temporary when the airport opened in 1998. The new structure runs on digital technology, replacing the old tower’s analog design, which Bedford said ran on copper wires and was “extremely old and inefficient.”
Many of the nation’s control towers were built in the 1950s and 1960s, and are “simply beyond their economic useful life,” he said.
The project cost $17.6 million, nearly $17 million of which came from state and federal grants, including funds from the FAA, airport spokesperson Olivia Tyler said.
The airport, which became the state’s busiest last year, is a job creator because it allows people to access the area, Womack said. That is key for attracting talent for the local business community, he said.
“This is one piece of a much larger mosaic…that helps develop the economic vitality that we are known for,” Womack said.
Six air traffic controllers are working in the new tower, which became operational Wednesday, and the goal is to add three more this year, officials said.
Nationwide there has been an ongoing shortage of air traffic controllers, due to federal government shutdowns.
Lapses in appropriations in the 2010s and the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in reduced hiring and increased attrition, according to a December report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Bedford said there’s a continued shortage because becoming an air traffic controller can take three to four years.
To address the issue, Bedford said officials “started supercharging hiring” last year by hiring more than 2,000 new trainees. Another 2,200 more are in the pipeline for this year and they’ve been authorized for 2,500 for next year, he said.
“That’s Part A — fill up the pipeline,” Bedford said. “Part B is get them through training faster and more efficiently and that’s what we’re going to be working on this year.”
The FAA has increased hiring every year since 2021, but there were about 6% fewer controllers in fiscal year 2025 than a decade earlier, according to the GAO report.
Total flights using the air traffic control system increased by about 10% to 30.8 million between fiscal years 2015 and 2024, the report states.
Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. This article was published with permission from the Arkansas Advocate. Contact Editor Andrew DeMillo for questions: [email protected]. Follow Arkansas Advocate on Facebook and Twitter.
