Standard-Examiner: Feds Want to Shut Down Ogden Airport Control Tower

“It’s not good news. It’s not good news at all,” sez Ogden-Hinkley Airport Manager Royal Eccles

The sky is the limit. There are options to grow. The ability to bring people in and move people out at a (reasonable) cost is just great.

Royal Eccles, Manager, Ogden-Hinckley Airport
Ogden airport going commercial
Sept. 17 2012

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Robert Burns, Scots Poet
To a Mouse
1785

Airport Bosters in HappierTimes

Amidst all the hoopla concerning Ogden-Hinkley Airport's recent expansion , and particularly with regard to the even more recent arrival of much-ballhooed commercial service by Allegiant Air, this morning's more than slightly unsettling Standard-Examiner story casts some troubling doubt on the commercial future of Ogden-Hinkley Airport, as upcoming and clownishly random federal budget sequestration spending cuts throw a monkey wrench into the grand plans and schemes of some rabid Ogden boosters.  Here's this morning's bad news, Ogden City lumpencitizens, straight from the pages of our home-town newspaper:

•  Feds want to shut down Ogden airport control tower

"The federal government wants to shut down Ogden-Hinckley Airport’s one and only control tower, a move that officials say would be devastating to the airport’s future, particularly its commercial jet service," this morning's Standard-Examiner grimly reports.

“It’s not good news. It’s not good news at all,” sez Airport Manager Royal Eccles, in a truly masterful display of understatement.

If Ogden's tower closes, "Ogden-Hinckley faces the prospect of laying off all five of its air traffic controllers," according to yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune story:

• Spending cuts may force control towers at 2 Utah airports to close

Needless to say, this alarming news has set Ogden-Hinkley's airport officials scrambling:

"Eccles said he and other city officials are working feverishly to compile [information about how the closure of a particular tower will adversely affect the national interest”] and plead the airport’s case. Eccles said work is also underway to recruit the help of Utah’s Congressional Delegation," this morning's S-E story reassures its readers (as if Utah's congressional delegation actually has any real "political juice" whatsoever, regarding this political hot potato).

Ogden-Hinkley's Future?

Something tells us that Mr. Eccles and his fellow airport cronies have an uphill fight in pleading that an Ogden-Hinkley tower closure would "adversely affect the national interest ,” inasmuch as both Hill Air Force Base and Salt Lake International Airport are conveniently situated a virtual stone's throw down the road. So perhaps it's time to pose the sodden (and pregnant) question:

Would it be prudent for Weber County Forum's old pal Royal Eccles to get to work compiling his own job resume, right along with his "national interest argument," just in case "circumstances" suddenly transform Hinkley Field from a booming intrastate commercial air traffic up-and-comer to a sleepy general aviation airport with neither a need a fancy control tower, NOR for a grossly overpaid Airport Manager?

Just a thought...