Terry Dunlay of Durango has been a pilot for about six years and flies his single-engine propeller plane in and out of Durango-La Plata County Airport about once a week.

Over those years, Dunlay, 67, said the air traffic control system at DRO functions, but there seems to be a need for a proper air traffic control tower.

Currently, DRO is a “non-towered” airport, and pilots use a Common Traffic Advisory Frequency, an open radio frequency, to communicate their positions and flight intentions to other aircraft and any vehicles on the ground. The airport has one asphalt runway measuring 9,201 by 150 feet.

With CTAF, or pilot-to-pilot communication, a protocol is used to let other pilots know step-by-step flight status and current location using call signs for takeoff and landing, finishing with the code word “Durango.” At controlled airports, tower personnel make the calls. Air traffic control at Durango is monitored by the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center in Longmont.

“The issue at Durango is that it’s got quite a few commercial airlines taking off and landing and you’ve got a lot of smaller planes, too,” said Dunlay, a retired biotech company manager. “The issue ends up being if you don’t have a tower, everything is based on those radio communications with the other pilots.”

Durango-La Plata County Airport first opened for commercial airline service in 1946. The current airport, which hasn’t had an air traffic control tower since it opened in 1988, is co-owned by the city of Durango and La Plata County and managed by the city.

According to a June 2023 report by the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA employs about 13,300 air traffic controllers in more than 300 facilities across the United States and currently, almost 10,600 are certified professional controllers. The report concluded “the lack of fully certified controllers, operational supervisors and traffic management coordinators pose a potential risk to air traffic operations.”

This year, the U.S. Department of Transportation said the U.S. air traffic control system is undergoing a major overhaul to modernize outdated infrastructure and improve safety and efficiency. According to The Associated Press, the Trump administration announced on May 8 a three-year plan to replace the nation’s aging air traffic control system. Doing that will require billions of dollars and a $12.5 billion budget proposal drafted by a House committee in early May. The proposal represents a “down payment” on the plan, developed after the fatal midair collision over Washington, D.C., in January.

Tony Vicari, director of aviation at DRO, said the CTAF system that serves as air traffic control in Durango has been efficient and there has never been a permanent control tower at the airport, although temporary towers have been installed during wildfires.

Vicari, who’s been at DRO since 2015, said the CTAF functions well in coordinating pilot actions and traffic patterns. Durango-La Plata County Airport and its staff of 22 full-time employees – none involved in air traffic control – handle about 40,000 aircraft operations annually, including runway flow operations. Those operations include private flights, recreational flying and other non-scheduled flights; scheduled commercial flights; air taxi flights operated by smaller airlines or companies providing transportation services; and military flights. He said the current system efficiently manages and coordinates all flights using the airport, including American Airlines and United Airlines.

At DRO, there is no FAA personnel on site to monitor its Class E airspace, controlled airspace designed for both en route and terminal operations. It’s monitored by air traffic control, but pilots operating under visual flight rules generally don’t need air traffic control clearance to fly in it. It is the most common type of airspace below 18,000 feet; air space above that level is controlled by air traffic control.

Additionally, Vicari, who’s lived in Durango for 11 years, said non-towered airports are “extremely common” across the United States, although less so at airports with commercial airline service. He mentioned the Montrose Regional Airport, the Steamboat Springs Airport and the Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport as comparable non-towered airports.

“I think the current non-towered system here is safe and functions efficiently. It’s a commonly used approach around the nation; it functions safely,” he said. “As the airport’s traffic continues to grow, which it has, over time the conversation at some point does push toward ‘when is a fixed-tower airport something that would be required?’”

As for the current state and functionality of how DRO operates and monitors air traffic, Vicari said it is a combination of the airport working with the FAA – based on a cost-benefit analysis – to determine when a tower is necessary. He said airports with “lower operational volumes” do not generally trigger an FAA evaluation for a control tower.

Vicari said there are no current plans to consider adding a control tower, and implementation of one is “complex” and could require a $10 million to $20 million capital investment to build the facility, along with ongoing staffing expenses.

“As we look at it in the future, it will continue to be a conversation with the FAA around when the traffic levels at DRO would rise to the volume that would trigger that cost benefit to state a tower is the direction we need to be going,” he said.

Vicari added that the airport is also looking at the recent development of digital towers, which replace brick-and-mortar towers using remote technology such as camera arrays and digital technology. These systems, in coordination with the FAA, would allow for localized air traffic control of nearby airspace but done remotely by certified air traffic controllers who are not on site.

“It does represent potential opportunity for medium-sized and smaller airports that are currently non-towered,” he said. “You could offer control tower services without the steep, eight-figure capital investment. It’s something we’re keeping our eyes on as we grow.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation also plans to install “4,600 high-speed network connections for data and communications across the air traffic control system at airports and radar control centers and other facilities across the country,” according to The Associated Press.