Well, sadly, Wednesday, December 31st, 2014 was the end of a long-run for the tower at KSGH. After the F-16's departed the Springfield OANG base a few years ago, it wasn't long before the Feds. pulled out their aircraft tower personnel, the Guard fire department and a weather unit. The City of Springfield tried, for a couple of years to staff the airport with a civilian tower operator (and a second civilian back-up), about four SFD members, who worked just a 5-day operation, from usually around 8 AM to 4 PM.
Sometime in 2014, the City of Springfield decided, because of the huge cost, to supply these services to KSGH, it would no longer offer this service and "mothball" the tower-operation. KSGH will now go to a standard UNICOM control, with probably Columbus Approach/Departure handling "instrument" traffic to the ILS, just like they normally do. About the only thing which really changes is, according to what I have read, KSGH is closed to regular scheduled airline with more that 9 seats and to unscheduled airlines with more than 30 seats. There hasn't been a major scheduled airline since probably in the 1960's when Lake Central served Springfield. I think Sunbird Aviation might have ran some scheduled service a few years ago with a small turboprop commuter plane, mainly to Chicago for International Navistar.
It was a very sad day, indeed. I have lived in the Springfield-area (I live right under the area where the base-leg is executed for Runway 24, since 1971) and my digital GRE PSR 600 is on 24/7 for years. I started to monitor the tower when I moved to Urbana in 1964, on a home-made aircraft scanner I made, from an article in Popular Electronics, back then.
I will really miss hearing the guys, both military & civilian on 120.7 and 121.7. I cannot believe it has ended, after this many years!
There has been talk about a re-open, if the US Air Force decides to build a runway-system for C-17 training; however, that is just Government BS for the most and will probably never happen in my lifetime.
It was great to hear traffic conversations the past few weeks, between the pilots and the tower operator about the impending closing of the tower; but, it was kind of sad, also.
It will be interesting to see when and if the FAA changes from 120.7/121.7 to a Unicom freq. Looks like 122.95 was the published freq.
Sometime in 2014, the City of Springfield decided, because of the huge cost, to supply these services to KSGH, it would no longer offer this service and "mothball" the tower-operation. KSGH will now go to a standard UNICOM control, with probably Columbus Approach/Departure handling "instrument" traffic to the ILS, just like they normally do. About the only thing which really changes is, according to what I have read, KSGH is closed to regular scheduled airline with more that 9 seats and to unscheduled airlines with more than 30 seats. There hasn't been a major scheduled airline since probably in the 1960's when Lake Central served Springfield. I think Sunbird Aviation might have ran some scheduled service a few years ago with a small turboprop commuter plane, mainly to Chicago for International Navistar.
It was a very sad day, indeed. I have lived in the Springfield-area (I live right under the area where the base-leg is executed for Runway 24, since 1971) and my digital GRE PSR 600 is on 24/7 for years. I started to monitor the tower when I moved to Urbana in 1964, on a home-made aircraft scanner I made, from an article in Popular Electronics, back then.
I will really miss hearing the guys, both military & civilian on 120.7 and 121.7. I cannot believe it has ended, after this many years!
There has been talk about a re-open, if the US Air Force decides to build a runway-system for C-17 training; however, that is just Government BS for the most and will probably never happen in my lifetime.
It was great to hear traffic conversations the past few weeks, between the pilots and the tower operator about the impending closing of the tower; but, it was kind of sad, also.
It will be interesting to see when and if the FAA changes from 120.7/121.7 to a Unicom freq. Looks like 122.95 was the published freq.
Springfield OH Tower's last day on air 12/31/2014
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