The move is angering local air traffic controllers, but not because they'd lose their jobs.
DAYTON: Air Traffic Controllers Face New Radar
Nate Miller, an air traffic controller at Dayton International, said the 39 controllers working the airport's tower will stay on the payroll but the area will still lose their expertise.
"It's a huge safety issue," said Miller. "The controller's biggest asset is local knowledge. If you get an aircraft that is lost and you can't give them visual references on where something's at, then how can you help get it to where it's going?"
FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro told WHIOTV.com that the controllers who are being moved to Columbus are not the ones who handle local traffic at the Dayton tower. They direct air traffic from 30 miles out of the airport at a special radar facility called the Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON.
"They read a radar scope," Molinaro explained, "something they can easily do from Columbus."
Molinaro added that moving the TRACON facility to Columbus makes fiscal sense; instead of installing expensive radar equipment in every new airport tower that gets built, the FAA is looking to combine operations from smaller Ohio airports -- like Dayton -- and move them to either Columbus or Cleveland.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, of which Miller is a member, says it's not opposed to realignment. The union, however, is opposed to the secretive way they say the FAA has been handling the matter, without input from controllers or pilots.
"There should be a process in place that takes us from step 1 ... to the actual completion date," Miller said. "They haven't included us in any of it -- equipment, how it's going to be done, personnel."
Molinaro said Dayton has been aware of the possible TRACON move ever since construction began on the new airport tower two years ago. He admits that details about the new jobs and salaries have not been made public because the FAA just recently signed a new contract with the air traffic controller's union, and the agency wants to make sure the upcoming changes meet the contract's conditions.