FAA says 173 air traffic control towers will close on April 7

[Ready4Change]

39. Yep. The majority of airports have no tower.

Non pilots often have no idea just how many small airports are out there. For every large metropolitan airport there are dozens of smaller ones. Some are pretty busy running shuttle services or charter flights, some are just quiet grass strips where people fly nice old tail draggers on weekends. Most are a strip of pavement used by a few dozen Cessna's, with some hangers and a cozy little flight school.

Most of these small airports have no tower. And some that do have a tower only have it manned during certain hours. That's pretty common in some outlier airports that only have a few medium size airliners flying shuttle flights to them a couple times a day.

The airport I learned at was just on the cusp of needing a tower due to how busy it was. It has everything operating out of it, from a glider port up to a business jet charter operation. The CTAF channel there was VERY active, as all the pilots communicated with each other to get in and out in a mostly smooth way. It worked pretty well then, but I hear there is a tower now, and I didn't see it on that list.

So, while having that particular tower stay operational is probably a good thing, the airport wouldn't shut down without it.