FAA decides Boise Airport can keep air-traffic control system, halting planned move to Utah

FAA: Boise Airport will keep air-traffic system

BOISE, Idaho — Boise Airport will keep the sophisticated air-traffic control system that federal aviation officials had intended to relocate and fold into operations based in Salt Lake City.

Federal Aviation Administration officials announced Tuesday they are backing off plans to uproot the Terminal Radar Approach Control system, or TRACON, from Idaho’s busiest airport.

The agency’s decision represents a victory for the state’s congressional delegation, which lobbied fiercely to prevent the move on grounds it could compromise public safety in the skies over southwest Idaho.

“It’s a good thing that we’re going to have the air traffic controllers, the people watching the skies and doing the science … who are much more familiar with the dynamics of our region than those living in Salt Lake City,” Sen. Mike Crapo said.

TRACON is one of three layers of radar technology used in managing air traffic at airports nationwide. In 2005, the FAA released a study that concluded moving the system, which keeps track of air traffic between five and 65 miles outside of Boise and ensures departing planes are leaving and landing on course, would save $24 million over the next 25 years.

But lawmakers and Idaho air traffic controllers union members objected, saying the study inflated the savings and ignored the safety and diverse air traffic demands over Idaho’s capital. The airport handles commercial, cargo and general aviation flights, but also military aircraft from nearby Gowen Field and wildfire fighting planes dispatched by the National Interagency Fire Center.

Relocating the system would also have meant the loss of more than a dozen high-paying jobs, officials said.

“It’s terrific news for Idaho on two fronts,” Rep. Walt Minnick, the delegation’s lone Democrat, told the Idaho Statesman. “One, air space is more safely and effectively controlled if it’s done by a local controller with intimate knowledge of the local geography. The second is that these are high-paying jobs. And high-paying jobs are at a premium when our economy is struggling.”