FAA Contract Tower Map: Eligibility, Cost-Share, and Liability

The official FAA contract tower list is published by the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Organization and covers all 265 contract towers operating across the United States and its territories. Each entry gives the airport’s location identifier, the facility name, and the city and state. The list sits inside the Contract Tower Program resources on faa.gov and is the only source that stays in sync with the FAA’s current operational agreements.¹

Where the Official List Lives

Go to faa.gov and navigate to the Air Traffic Organization pages for the Contract Tower Program. The index itself is published as the FCT List and includes every participating airport’s LOCID (the three- or four-letter location identifier), the facility name, and the city and state.² The program covers airports in the continental United States, Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Contract towers make up 51 percent of all federal air traffic control towers in the country and handled more than 17 million operations in calendar year 2023, roughly 29 percent of all tower operations nationwide.¹ Third-party aviation databases sometimes lag behind when airports enter or exit the program, so if the answer matters for planning or compliance, use the FAA page.

Checking Operating Hours

The list confirms whether an airport has a contract tower. It does not tell you when that tower is open. Many contract towers do not operate around the clock, and when a tower closes, the surrounding controlled airspace typically reverts to a lower classification or becomes uncontrolled.

Daily hours appear in the FAA’s Chart Supplement, formerly the Airport/Facility Directory.³ VFR sectional charts often carry the note “See Chart Supplement for D eff hrs” at airports with part-time towers rather than printing the schedule. Active NOTAMs capture temporary changes. Check both before flying to a contract-tower airport if you need to know whether you will be talking to a controller.

What a Contract Tower Is

A contract tower is an air traffic control tower staffed and operated by a private company under agreement with the FAA, rather than by federal employees. The program is authorized by federal statute and run by the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization to extend ATC coverage to lower-activity airports where full federal staffing would not be cost-justified.¹

Controllers at these facilities work for the contractor, not the FAA, but they hold the same certifications and meet the same training and medical standards as their federal counterparts. A typical contract tower employs between five and ten controllers. Both tower types follow the same FAA safety regulations, operational procedures, and orders.

How Airports Get On the List

An airport must satisfy five requirements under federal regulation to qualify for a contract tower:⁴

The airport must be open to and available for public use.
It must appear in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS).
The owner or authority must assure that the airport will remain in operation long enough to justify the tower investment.
The FAA must be furnished appropriate land for tower construction at no cost.
The airport must demonstrate a benefit-cost ratio of 1.0 or higher, using three consecutive years of FAA traffic counts and future projections.

The benefit-cost test is where most applications succeed or fail. The FAA calculates the ratio by dividing the present value of safety and efficiency benefits by the present value of tower construction and operating costs. The local airport sponsor is responsible for building and maintaining the physical tower facility.

Staying On the List Through Cost-Share

An airport already in the program that later drops below the 1.0 benefit-cost threshold does not automatically lose its tower. Federal law gives the sponsor a one-year grace period before any local cost obligation kicks in.⁵ After the grace period, the sponsor can keep the tower by entering the Cost-Share Program and paying a pro-rata share of operating cost, capped at 20 percent.¹ Sponsors that decline to cost-share lose the tower.

Cost and Safety Compared to FAA Towers

The financial gap between contract and FAA-staffed towers is substantial. A Department of Transportation Inspector General audit covering fiscal years 2015 through 2018 found contract towers cost roughly $7.41 per aircraft handled, compared to $22.34 at comparable FAA towers. Contract towers used at least 47.6 percent fewer resources per aircraft even though the comparable FAA facilities handled more total flights.⁶ An earlier 2012 audit put the annual operating difference at about $1.5 million per facility.

The primary mechanism behind those savings is lower controller pay and benefits at contract facilities. Despite the pay gap, the OIG found the safety records of the two tower types were similar.⁶

Liability at a Contract Tower Is Different

If you find an airport on the contract tower list, one legal consequence follows automatically: claims arising from controller error at that facility do not run against the federal government the way they would at an FAA tower. Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the United States can be sued for the negligence of its own employees, but the statute specifically excludes contractors from the definition of “federal agency.”⁷ A contract controller is a private employee, so a negligence claim tied to the controller’s actions runs against the contractor and its insurance.

Federal courts have confirmed the boundary. In a Seventh Circuit case involving an accident at a contract-staffed tower, the court held it lacked jurisdiction to hear claims against the United States based on the contract controller’s conduct, because the controller was not a government employee. The federal statute authorizing the program reinforces this by requiring agreements that relieve the United States from liability arising out of the acts or omissions of the contractor’s employees.⁵

What Could Change the List

The FAA is testing whether digital camera systems can replace traditional physical towers at some contract tower airports. A remote tower uses live video feeds, radar data, and high-resolution cameras mounted on elevated structures to give controllers a real-time view of the airfield from a centralized facility. Congress directed the FAA to evaluate remote tower feasibility and update the Contract Tower Program’s benefit-cost model to account for the technology.⁸

The FAA finalized a benefit-cost model for remote tower applicants in September 2021 and is conducting centralized testing at its testbed in Atlantic City, New Jersey. A previous trial at Leesburg Executive Airport in Virginia ran from 2015 to 2023 before the FAA ended it. No remote tower system has received full operational approval for use in the national airspace system yet. Vendors that complete the System Design Approval process will be placed on a Qualified Vendor System List, clearing them for deployment at airports that pass camera siting and commissioning.⁸ For airport sponsors weighing the capital cost of a physical structure, remote systems could eventually offer a cheaper way onto the contract tower list.

1
Federal Aviation Administration. FAA Contract Tower Program
2
Federal Aviation Administration. FCT List
3
Federal Aviation Administration. Controlled Airspace Effective Hours
4
eCFR. 14 CFR 170.13 – Airport Traffic Control Tower (ATCT) Establishment Criteria
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 49 USC 47124 – Agreements for State and Local Operation of Airport Facilities
6
DOT OIG. Contract Towers Are More Cost Effective Than Comparable FAA Towers and Have Similar Safety Records
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2671 – Definitions
8
Federal Aviation Administration. Remote Towers Information Presentation