FAA will start managing air traffic control operations at Mesa Gateway airport

The Federal Aviation Administration is assuming management of the air traffic control tower at Mesa Gateway airport.

Mesa was selected as part of a new program to transition high-activity air traffic control towers staffed by contractors to direct FAA oversight and operation.

On May 19, the FAA announced Mesa Gateway Airport and Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport as the first two airports to enter the program. The program is expected to take between two to four years to complete.

Gateway Airport is the busiest contract tower in the United States. With more than 300,000 operations per year, the airspace above Gateway complex deals with a variety of operators from commercial to military, wildland firefighting, cargo and student training.

Midwest ATC is the company contracted to manage air traffic at Gateway airport. According to the FAA, contract towers represent 51% of air traffic control towers in the United States.

Ryan Smith, a spokesperson for Gateway Airport, says this is the first time ever the FAA has made this transition.

“We're trendsetters here,” Smith said. “This is something that we helped create, and we're going to go forward and hopefully figure it out and make it a successful program.”

Smith said this has been an ongoing effort by Gateway Airport for 15 years. The airport identified a need to upgrade its airspace to handle demand, but federal law made it difficult to make the necessary changes.

“They created a mechanism to take an FAA tower and make it a contract tower, but there was never a legal mechanism to take it from a [contract] control tower back into an FAA tower,” Smith said.

The airport lobbied for Congress to change the law.

Its plan was to build a new air traffic control tower, and then have the FAA take over and run it, Smith said.

When the 2018 FAA reauthorization bill passed, it allowed Gateway to construct a new $30 million FAA-complaint tower — funded by the federal government — which opened in 2023.

After the tower was complete, the airport continued to lobby for change. The 2024 FAA reauthorization bill created a program to allow airports to transition to FAA oversight.

Smith said part of the motivation for the change was to bring more staffing consistency.

Nationwide, the FAA is dealing with pilot and air traffic controller shortages. Smith said the FAA would “poach” Gateway’s controllers to fill vacancies in FAA-managed towers.

“Obviously the FAA wouldn't poach from themselves,” Smith said.

And now that the federal agency will oversee Mesa Gateway’s tower, “They would keep our staffing numbers the same,” Smith said.

Contract controllers are held to the same training requirements and mandatory retirement age of 56 as FAA controllers.

Most contract controllers are former military controllers. After they get out of the military, they may be too old to enter the FAA training program but are often hired and trained by contract towers.

“They already have their training, they don't need to start from ground zero, so they'll come to a contract tower,” Smith said.

Smith said the upgrades to Gateway’s airspace are not finished.

“Now with the FAA taking over, if and when that becomes official, my guess is they'll probably shift it to a Charlie airspace,” Smith said.

Currently, Gateway is a Class Delta airspace with control of up to 2,500 feet above the airport.

If upgraded to Class Charlie, Gateway would have control over two layers of airspace above the airport — up to 4,000 feet and 5.75 miles around the airport; and from between 1,200 and 4,000 feet 10.5 miles around the airport.

Smith said it would be a huge undertaking, and could take more than five years.