How Old Are ATC Facilities?
When the FAA's towers, approach controls, and centers opened
En route centers
64 years old
The typical center opened in 1962. All 21 opened between 1957 and 1969.
Towers
39 years old
The typical tower opened in 1987. 67 are 50 or older.
Approach controls
24 years old
The typical one opened in 2002. They are the newest buildings in the system.
How old the buildings are
The FAA runs 313 air traffic facilities: 263 towers, 21 en route centers, and 29 approach controls and combined facilities. The en route centers are the oldest. All 21 opened between 1957 and 1969, 20 of them in the 1960s, along with 34 towers that are still in use.
Tower building peaked in the 1990s and has slowed every decade since: 44 of today’s towers opened in the 1990s, 30 in the 2000s, 20 in the 2010s and 5 so far in the 2020s.
FAA facilities by the decade they opened
- Towers
- Approach controls
- En route centers
Show the numbers
| Opened | Towers | Approach controls | En route centers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1950s | 6 | 0 | 1 |
| 1960s | 34 | 0 | 20 |
| 1970s | 38 | 0 | 0 |
| 1980s | 41 | 3 | 0 |
| 1990s | 44 | 4 | 0 |
| 2000s | 30 | 10 | 0 |
| 2010s | 20 | 3 | 0 |
| 2020s | 5 | 0 | 0 |
Where the old towers are
Mostly at smaller airports. Towers 50 or older are 31% of the towers but handle 21% of the traffic. Of the 25 busiest towers, 4 are 50 or older: Boston (1973), Montgomery (1965), Long Beach (1968) and Van Nuys (1967). The five busiest are all newer: Chicago O'Hare (1996), Atlanta (2006), Dallas-Fort Worth (1994), Denver (1995) and Las Vegas (2016).
The oldest towers
- Terre Haute Tower Terre Haute, IN1953
- Casper Tower Casper, WY1954
- Duluth Tower Duluth, MN1955
- Erie Tower Erie, PA1957
- Rockford Tower Rockford, IL1958
- Peoria Tower Peoria, IL1959
- Rochester Municipal TRACAB Rochester, MN1960
- Tulsa Tower Tulsa, OK1961
- Akron-Canton Tower North Canton, OH1962
- Boeing Tower Seattle, WA1962
- Fresno Tower Fresno, CA1962
The newest towers
- Asheville Tower Fletcher, NC2026
- Teterboro Tower Teterboro, NJ2024
- Charlotte Tower Charlotte, NC2022
- Fort Myers Tower Ft Myers, FL2022
- Greensboro Tower Greensboro, NC2022
- Sarasota Tower Sarasota, FL2018
- Las Vegas Tower Las Vegas, NV2016
- San Francisco Tower San Francisco, CA2016
- Tucson Tower Tucson, AZ2016
- Cleveland Tower Cleveland, OH2015
- Donald J Trump Tower West Palm Beach, FL2015
New towers are being built at Peoria, Casper and Grand Forks, and replacements are approved or funded at Rockford, Sacramento and San Jose.
View the list of every FAA facility or the ATC facility map.
The en route centers
The 21 en route centers work the airspace between airports, where an airline flight spends most of its time. Miami’s came first, in 1957. Most of the rest were built in one burst: 18 opened in the four years from 1960 through 1963, followed by Houston in 1965 and Anchorage in 1969.
None has been replaced. No center has moved into a new building since Anchorage’s opened in 1969. The FAA’s modernization program includes building and consolidating some centers, and $3.5 billion of the money Congress approved in 2025 is for facility construction of all kinds.
Construction plans from the Government Accountability Office’s September 2026 report.
How old the equipment is
The radios, radars, displays and lines that connect facilities are replaced on their own schedules. The Transportation Secretary said old switches and routers on that network caused the nationwide halt to departures on November 13, 2026. This is what the Government Accountability Office reported in September 2026:
| Equipment | How old | Replacement planned |
|---|---|---|
| FTI FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure: the network linking facilities, radars and radios | Copper cables from the 1960s | 5,170 copper lines to fiber by December 2028; 2,560 were done by May 2026. A new network, FENS, is to replace FTI |
| Voice switches Connect controllers to their radios and phone lines | The oldest are 1990s technology, and most are no longer made | All 450 by November 2028 |
| Radios Air-to-ground voice, about 42,000 of them | Many have been out of production since 2015 or earlier | Digital radios at 1,581 sites by December 2028 |
| Radars Terminal and en route surveillance | No longer made, and at or past a planned 20-year life | New electronics for 612 radars by December 2028 |
| Information displays Charts, notices and weather at the controller’s position | Floppy disks and 1980s interfaces | E-IDS, one system at 435 locations, by September 2028 |
| Flight strips Each flight’s details, on paper in the tower | Paper, except where TFDM is installed | TFDM’s electronic strips at 89 airports by November 2028 |
| ERAM En Route Automation Modernization: flight tracking at the centers | Relies on aging systems and is costly to sustain | The Common Automation Platform, one system for centers and terminals; no date set |
| STARS Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System: flight tracking at towers and approach controls | Parts have reached the end of their life | The Common Automation Platform as well |
E-IDS is the Enterprise Information Display System, TFDM the Terminal Flight Data Manager, and FENS FAA Enterprise Network Services.
Most of this equipment is due to be replaced by December 2028, with ERAM and STARS to follow. In 2024 the same office reported that the FAA had rated 51 of its 138 air traffic control systems unsustainable and another 54 potentially unsustainable.
The money
Congress approved $12.5 billion for the work in July 2025. After the November 13 failure, the Transportation Secretary asked Congress for $50 billion to replace aging hardware, communications equipment and control towers.
From the Government Accountability Office’s September 2026 report on the FAA’s modernization program and its 2024 report on aging systems.