SKY HARBOR AIRPORT’S OLD CONTROL TOWER COMING DOWN
Photos: 1 | 2 (thumbnails, captions below)
By STEPHANIE SANCHEZ
Cronkite News Service
PHOENIX (Thursday, Nov. 29) _ After serving Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport for 30 years, the old air traffic control tower is coming down.
On Thursday, a crane removed the cab from atop the 181-foot-high tower, which was built next to Terminal 3 in 1977. The concrete-and-metal base will be taken apart in pieces and hauled away.
“It’s just progress,” said Gary Martelli, an assistant with the Phoenix Airport Museum. “We have a joke among airport workers that this place is just a construction site where planes come and go.”
The tower’s replacement, a 324-foot, $89 million tower, opened earlier this year. Part of more than $2 billion in upgrades planned for the airport, the new facility helps prepare Sky Harbor to receive an expected 50.5 million passengers annually by 2015, 10 million more than in 2005.
In its day, the old tower was Sky Harbor’s state-of-the-art centerpiece.
“It was a huge technological leap,” said Michael Whitehurst, an assistant with the airport museum. “At the time it was one of the biggest towers.”
“The old building was an inefficient design, and there were not comfortable working conditions,” said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
The new tower offers unobstructed views of the entire airport and the latest technology. Controllers in the old tower couldn’t see all of the airport’s taxiways after Terminal 4 expanded.
“The physical working conditions are better,” said Phil Freed, the airport’s air traffic manager. “It’s much cleaner and friendlier _ a lot more computer room to do training.”
The new tower can track 1,350 aircraft at once, airport officials say. Nearly 1,500 aircraft and arrive and depart on an average day at Sky Harbor.
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PHOTOS: Click thumbnails to see full-resolution images and download
CAPTION FOR BC-CNS-SKY HARBOR TOWER: A crane removes the cab from the old control tower at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007. Thirty years after it became the airport’s state-of-the-art centerpiece, the control tower is coming down. It’s been replaced with a new tower more than 300 feet tall. (Cronkite News Service Photo/Stephanie Sanchez)
CAPTION FOR BC-CNS-SKY HARBOR TOWER: As a crane in the distance works on dismantling the old control tower at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, the new control tower stands in the foreground on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007. The new tower is 326 feet tall and cost $89 million. (Cronkite News Service Photo/Stephanie Sanchez)