Motorists on Highway 94 near Highway 40-61 may have noticed several tall antennae have been erected in the Missouri Research Park near Weldon Spring.
They may not look like traditional air traffic control towers, but this year these antennae are expected to help keep more than 600,000 planes on course within a 50-mile radius of St. Charles County.
They are attached to the Federal Aviation Administration’s new Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility, a 41,000-square-foot, two-story building that is replacing the 17,000-square-foot TRACON facility built 33 years ago near Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.
After three years of planning and construction, the new $9 million facility began operations April 27 at 22 Research Park Court. About 100 employees, including 59 air traffic controllers, were transferred from the old facility to the new one. A skeleton crew will remain at the old building until all of its equipment is moved.
“We moved entire systems from one location to another 22 miles away. Our transition went so well that we should be the model for the entire country,” said Andie Ramaker, TRACON air traffic manager.
New technology, escalating air traffic and planned airport expansion necessitated the move, Ramaker said.
“They were going to put a runway where the old TRACON was,” she said. “We were also outgrowing the building. We’re going to add new technology in the next few years that would not have fit in the old TRACON.”
FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said employee representatives selected St. Charles County as the location for the new TRACON because a large percent of the workforce lived in the area.
“It would be a shorter commute,” he said. “Also, they thought the park location was pleasant.”
TRACON air traffic controllers manage airspace below 13,000 feet in a 5- to 50- mile radius, coordinating aircraft spacing as they approach and depart airports.
“An airport tower takes planes on and off the concrete,” Ramaker said. “We funnel them up into the overhead stream to get them to their destination.”
The St. Louis area TRACON ranks 20th in the nation in total flights handled annually. The Lambert facility handled more than 634,000 aircraft flights last year, including planes to and from Lambert, Spirit of St. Louis Airport in Chesterfield, St. Louis Downtown Airport in Cahokia, Ill., Scott Mid-America Airport in Belleville, Ill., St. Louis Regional Airport in Alton, Ill., and numerous small airfields.
The new facility has 19 radar controller positions and four satellite positions. It uses an upgraded automated radar terminal system, called ARTSIIIE, to provide data information for the radar targets. It is one of only five TRACON facilities in the nation to use high resolution precision runway monitor displays to assist approach operations for closely spaced parallel runways. It is the first to use a critical redundant power distribution system for improved reliability of critical electronic systems.
