Who else is impacted by the towers time reductions? It was so weird flying into KMMU (Morristown, NJ) yesterday and calling out my locations and discussing separation strategies with other pilots. https://www.faa.gov/coronavirus/regulatory_updates/media/Control_Tower_Hour_Adjustment_list.pdf
I fly out the LA are in SoCal and almost every Delta shuts down at 5 or 6PM. Every night flight around here is on CTAF.
My home field, cmi, is one. I forgot about it until I got in the plane last Saturday morning, and instead of an atis recording, there was an automated awos. I did check notams, but assumed I wouldn't be departing before they opened. Anyway, we're a class c, and I did all my training here, so I'm very used to talking to ground, tower, & approach. It felt very, very wrong announcing my intentions on the tower frequency and taking off without permission. The other club planes are based at bmi, and they didn't get adjusted. I was thinking it was due to being a contract tower, but FedEx has facilities there, so that could be it, too.
When I looked at the numbers for the airports that are the busiest in current times, something stuck out to me - this has NOTHING to do with traffic volume. This has everything to do with going after the locality pay of high COL area controllers. KMYF is the 18th busiest airport in the country right now - hours cut to 8-6 instead of 6-9. KCMA is like 34th. 7-5 instead of 7-9. Yet, you have po dunk level 5 towers staying open
My point is that the change in hours is different. KMMU is under the NYC Bravo, and was open at least until 11:00PM local if not 24 hours until the recent change. Are the airports where you fly were already closing at 5, or is that a change in the past 2 weeks?
For my field it wasn't a reduction in hours but consolidation of frequencies. CD was often combined with ground, but on Saturday CD, ground, and tower was all on tower. Definitely caused about 5-10 mins longer on the ground having to wait a little bit longer to get clearances. Doesn't help that one runway was under construction and some taxiways were closed so there was only one direction flow. If it's on the hobbs it counts, though!
Not by movements. FAA uses a mixed criteria to determine how "busy" an airport is that includes number of passengers
Those numbers are strictly aircraft movements straight from the FAA OPSNET Air Traffic Activity Data System; no passenger anything. Top 50 towers YTD last/current year: 1 ORD 230,003 230,553 2 ATL 224,273 225,732 3 DFW 188,293 189,971 4 LAX 168,988 174,280 5 DEN 165,237 166,014 6 CLT 157,010 158,954 7 DVT 156,825 158,796 8 PHX 128,220 137,250 9 LAS 127,881 133,339 10 IAH 122,296 123,717 11 EWR 108,002 122,266 12 MIA 114,071 116,889 13 FFZ 113,185 115,383 14 SEA 112,078 112,904 15 JFK 106,805 110,420 16 SFO 109,146 110,366 17 BOS 102,086 105,191 18 SLC 97,820 102,798 19 MCO 102,476 102,714 20 MSP 101,224 102,686 21 DTW 100,243 100,724 22 SFB 99,893 100,158 23 LGA 87,248 98,300 24 PHL 95,430 96,901 25 FLL 90,140 94,760 26 APA 89,500 90,824 27 DCA 76,870 90,466 28 DAB 87,575 88,119 29 IWA 85,845 87,671 30 LGB 83,192 87,643 31 HWO 79,182 83,247 32 HNL 80,686 80,764 33 VNY 65,941 79,642 34 CHD 78,171 79,130 35 SNA 76,427 78,883 36 MYF 76,358 78,788 37 VRB 75,410 76,058 38 IAD 73,930 75,766 39 TMB 71,939 72,872 40 BWI 65,822 69,042 41 MEM 67,714 68,746 42 SDL 66,205 68,334 43 DAL 60,588 67,883 44 SAN 58,702 67,703 45 PDX 58,041 67,192 46 CNO 63,211 66,366 47 TEB 36,333 66,319 48 TPA 63,515 65,804 49 ANC 62,224 64,280 50 PMP 49,528 63,348 51 PUB 62,287
