FAA lends mobile traffic control tower to Saipan airport

The Federal Aviation Administration has installed a mobile air traffic control tower on top of an empty cargo container to assist on the Francisco C. Ada/Saipan International Airport’s air traffic control services. (Jon Perez)

The Federal Aviation Administration, which has been assisting the CNMI since Super Typhoon Yutu barreled through Saipan and Tinian in late October, has installed a mobile air traffic control tower at the Francisco C. Ada/Saipan International Airport to help it be able to receive incoming flights.

Tim Cornelison, Air Traffic manager of the FAA Guam Air Route Traffic Control Center, told Saipan Tribune that FAA brought in the mobile Airport Traffic Control Tower from Boise, Idaho, just a few days after the storm. “We shipped that here so we have a place to operate from.”

“And the mobile ATCT is fully functional…it was shipped in a military plane. We picked it up and had it placed on top of two containers to give it more of a little elevation.

“All ATC services that have been normally provided from the Saipan airport’s ATCT facility have been temporarily transferred to the FAA’s mobile facility until repairs to the building have been completed.

“This [mobile ATC] tower was very basic when it got here. So, we needed all the instrumentation that was in the [Saipan] tower. We ran all the cables from the tower to this to get all the instrumentation that we needed from there to this one,” said Cornelison.

He related that all electronic navigational aids at the Saipan airport were completely destroyed in the wake of Super Typhoon Yutu while the ATCT and base building suffered substantial damage.

The glass windows of the airport’s ATCT blew inside, allowing water to get inside the building and damage the equipment. The walls must be replaced while water also entered the elevator shaft. The Saipan airport’s six jet bridges were also damaged.

As of Nov. 25, all electronic navigational aids at the Saipan airport have been fully restored and the FAA is working with the Commonwealth Ports Authority to assess and repair the damages to the ATCT and base building. “Right now, all of the navigation needs of the Saipan airport had been restored.”

“The accomplishments of this small group of people to restore these services within one month is nothing short of remarkable, and could not have possible without the support of the entire FAA organization, our federal partners [Federal Emergency Management Agency], the [U.S.] Department of Defense, and, of course, our local partners, the CPA, and the [CNMI] Office of the Governor,” he said.

FAA officials in Guam have been on Saipan since Oct. 25 and worked to restore air traffic control services and electronic air navigation facilities of both the Saipan and Tinian airports.

Cornelison, who came to Saipan on a U.S. Navy helicopter from Guam, was with a group of 15 FAA technical operations employees from Guam, Saipan, and other locations throughout the western United States who have been assisting local airport officials.

Cornelison, who also serves as FAA’s Western Pacific Regional Administrators Local Coordinator for Guam and the CNMI, said: “We will be here for quite a while until all the repairs are finished here. After we did our assessment, we know that there was going to be extensive repairs here. It could take months…”

“So, when it comes to the overall restoration of the airport, we got a great deal of support from a lot of people. We worked very closely with CPA and its board of directors. The local government as well had a great deal of support in prioritizing what we needed and getting the equipment we needed to get the airport back up to 100 percent,” said Cornelison.

“The effort and help of every FAA people all over the country in searching for the parts to make sure we have everything that we needed to put the airport back together [is incredible]. So, it was really an amazing effort and support from a lot of people.”

In addition to the navigational aids in Guam and the CNMI, FAA technical operations employees based in Guam and Saipan install, maintain, and certify the navigational aids at the airports in Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands.