ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Pleas of change are coming from within the Northeast Florida Regional Airport.
“We just need another air traffic controller there on board. That’s it. It should be an easy fix,” an anonymous representative with the Florida Flyers school told Action News Jax Monday. “Shouldn’t be that difficult to hire an air traffic controller that helps us. You know, we’re always promoting safety, and that’s part of the safety.”
Three separate anonymous sources with inside knowledge of airport operations tell Action News Jax that many days, there is just one air traffic controller manning the airport’s tower. According to them, that tower handles upward of 500 flight operations a day in and out of the airport.
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A flight school at the airport, Florida Flyers School, presented grave safety concerns about this shortage to airport authority executive director Courtney Pittman in a safety report filed within the past couple of months.
A source at the school, who asked to remain anonymous because of worries about any potential impact on the business, echoed those concerns with Action News Jax.
“When you have an extra eye there in the sky, it’s very important and vital, especially in such a busy environment as air traffic controllers,” the source explained in an interview Monday. “So the pilots, especially the student pilots, sometimes when they fly by themselves, they... they need this extra assistant and extra eye for them to be organized to come in the traffic pattern.”
While these shortages are drawing safety concerns, the source also tells Action News the flying school’s operations have been thrown into disarray and their business has been directly harmed as a result.
“It limits us only for two days and certain hours during these two days to deliver these training for our students,” they explained. “So we cannot have them like every day, we can’t do that like other airports, and this is what we used to do here. Before that issue with the missing one of their air traffic controllers. Again, that’s affecting the reputation of the business.”
Now – the plea for more air traffic controllers at the airport remains, but with no immediate plans for improvements on the horizon, according to the complainants.
“We had promises, but there’s never, again, it’s been like now maybe seven, eight months now and there’s no solution for it,” said the source. “So, we’re talking about not promises, we’re talking about actions.”
Action News Jax also reached out to airport managers for a response to the concerns raised and details on the current staffing situation, but has yet to hear back.
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