Getting There: Coeur d’Alene Airport built a control tower from shipping containers

Instead of waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration to build an air traffic control tower, Coeur d’Alene Airport decided to build its own.

The semipermanent structure built atop a stack of shipping containers will be staffed next summer.

“It is really a safety issue,” said Bruce Mattare, Kootenai County commissioner and airport liaison.

The general aviation airport in Hayden mostly serves small bush planes, private jets, express cargo and emergency aircraft. Despite having no commercial passenger service, it is the second-busiest airport in Idaho in terms of total flights.

Some days during peak season, it has even more flights than Boise or Spokane International Airport.

From a traffic standpoint, “a Cessna flight is no different than a Southwest flight,” Mattare said.

Most of the time the airfield is “uncontrolled,” meaning pilots coordinate with each other over radio to take off and land. That’s manageable in the winter months, when daily flights drop to about 150. But in the summer, that number rises to 600.

“Having a tower to sequence that traffic properly and put them on the right runway – that’s definitely a safer situation,” Airport Director Gaston Patterson said.

But it can take a decade to get FAA approval for a permanent tower. So, Patterson thought about interim solutions to deal with the immediate safety risk.

For a few weeks during fire season, the U.S. Forest Service contracts air traffic control services at the airport using a mobile trailer. But that setup is less than ideal. From only a few feet off the ground, controllers do not have a clear view of each runway and taxiway.

Patterson looked into installing a prefabricated fire lookout tower, but quotes ranged over half a million dollars. Then he thought about popular social media posts he had seen of houses built creatively out of shipping containers. He crunched the numbers and realized he could build a tower for $300,000.

The smallest FAA towers cost $20 million, Patterson said.

Although Kootenai County oversees the airport, the airport is self-sufficient and no longer takes any local tax money because it earns enough from user fees.

At first, the tower will be used from June through October. Eventually, it could be open year-round.

While residents have complained of increasing noise, Mattare said the tower will help by routing air traffic over less populated neighborhoods.

“People associate a tower with more traffic,” Mattare said, “but it doesn’t create traffic.”

Population growth is what really drives more traffic, he said. The purpose of the tower is purely for safety. Not having a tower is like not having a traffic light at an already busy intersection.

Mattare stressed the importance of the airport to the community’s local economy and emergency services. Besides Forest Service air tankers, the airport is also a base for Life Flight Network’s medical air transport.

Patterson said it is possible for regular passenger flights to come to the airport in the future, but it wouldn’t be anything like major airlines seen in Spokane. Rather, it would likely be small turboprops with commuter service to close destinations like Missoula, Boise or Seattle.

“While something larger could operate here under the right conditions, it would be highly unlikely,” Patterson said.

Meanwhile, the airport is still on the FAA’s waiting list for a permanent control tower. If approved, the FAA would pay for the tower and staffing.

The shipping container tower is easy to dismantle and could feasibly be sold to another airport, Patterson said. The tower could be a model for other small airports, and Patterson suggested the FAA consider providing something like it to high-traffic airports while they wait for an official tower.

Mattare and Patterson are hosting a townhall meeting about the future of the airport and its relationship with the community at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Kootenai County Administration Building . Seating is limited.