BEND, Ore. – The 360-degree vista of the High Desert’s mountains and buttes is as stunning as you might expect from the top of the Bend Airport’s new 115-foot-tall Bend air traffic control tower, which is finally ready to get down to business – up in the air - and hold its ribbon-cutting next month.

Airport Manager Tracy Williams led a small group of visitors on a top-to-bottom tour of the $15 million facility on Thursday, delving deep into the features and complexities of a modern-day control tower, which go way beyond big windows and a pair of strong binoculars. 

I said top-to-bottom on purpose, because we all first took an elevator up (well, almost - as I'll explain later) to where the controllers – starting with the air traffic manager, due to start Oct. 1, then a second staffer about two weeks later – will be scanning the skies and the runways to communicate with pilots and make sure all is safe and well. 

We then took the stairs down, one flight (get it?) at a time, to see just what goes into fleshing out such a facility, which recently won its Federal Aviation Administration certification.

A mix of FAA and state funds went into creating the new tower – apparently now the tallest man-made structure in Central Oregon. It has been sought for years by pilots at Oregon’s third-busiest airport, with about 140,000 takeoffs and landings a year.

Those pilots include a duly impressed couple on this day’s tour: Curt and Robin Baney, owners of the Oxford Suites properties around the West, including the award-winning Oxford Hotel in downtown Bend.

The tower has all the safety features you’d expect for such a vital facility, from a huge generator that would kick in fast to a dedicated fire command center and a stairway pressurization system that would keep what could be the only way out clear of smoke, if need be.

City Facilities Project Manager Garrett Kaye provided more details about various features during the tour, such as special “yield plates” with the large, custom iron structural beams, designed to deflect the potentially damaging impacts of a major earthquake.

Of course, there are niceties of modern living in the controller “cab,” too, from a two-layer set of motorized shades to a microwave, refrigerator and sink, a large Keurig-style coffeemaker and water dispenser, etc., etc. Williams played a key role in choosing all of the features, including the light gray tiles that make up the tower’s exterior.

Why motorized shades? Williams said she was stationed at 10 air traffic control towers over the years, most built in the '50s and '60s, so "young ladies like us had to do this kind of crazy thing with pulling cords."

Area's 'radar hole' changes controllers' roles

But one thing you might expect to see at the controllers’ desks is not there: radar screens. As many longtime Bend residents know, Central Oregon is in a “radar hole,” with the nearest ones located at National Weather facilities in Pendleton, Portland, Medford and Boise.

Hence a somewhat low-tech feature at the controller workstations: a place where written strips of paper listing arriving and departing planes' tail numbers are slid up and down, to keep track in what Williams said will be “advisory services” until full-on air traffic management begins next year.

There’s also a lot of future-proofing going on, too – not every square inch will be occupied when the tower goes into service, with some space allotted for needs tied to the region’s continued growth. While they will open the tower with only one or two controllers, there’s room for up to seven down the road.

As newcomers to the area soon learn, the Bend Municipal Airport isn’t actually in Bend – it’s several miles to the east, in Deschutes County. The FAA contract requires a secure facility, so there’s an access control system to get past the security fence.

Williams said construction began in June 2023 on Bend’s new tower, which is also the nation’s first totally new FAA-funded facility in several years – what she said an FAA inspector deemed the “gold standard” going forward.

There’s a colorful mural on the wall beside the elevator on the ground floor – an up-close view of a jet engine.

“The instruction that I delivered to our architect who designed this was that it didn’t feel like a government facility or an institution,” Williams said. “I wanted it to be comfortable, and look good.”

The elevator only became operational just over a month ago, so all the equipment and material brought in by contractors had to be carried up the stairs until recently.

But the elevator doesn’t climb all the way to the controllers’ space, so there’s a circular stairway to climb, from one floor below. That’s because a 360-degree view is necessary for the controllers to do their job - and an elevator shaft would just get in the way.

Special binoculars will play a key role, because it’s a “VFR” (visual flight rules) tower – remember, no radar – so the controllers will be doing a practice known as “see and avoid,” writing each flight’s tail number on strips of paper to keep track. (Later, they are shredded.)

The controllers will start staffing the tower from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., extending to 9 p.m. in about 90 days, basically the same hours of operation as the Redmond Airport tower.

Several of those on this tour climbed a folding, drop-down ladder to go onto the roof, to see the rotating beacon and other features, including the unobstructed, amazing view.

Details matter, like a special carpet in the “cab” that has electrostatic discharge, connected to the tower’s grounding system. Even the chairs have a chain below the seat, to transfer any static electricity downward.

There’s also a pair of red phones, which are for just what you might expect – a crash or other severe incident or emergency, when they need to instantly contact Deschutes County 911 dispatchers.

Various equipment rooms we visited include one that Williams called “the brains of the operation,” which is chilly, like most “tech cores,” to keep everything cool and working properly.

There’s a locked cage on the FAA side of that room, she explained, “because say we have a disgruntled air traffic controller, and they have access to this room. They start pulling plugs. Now you’ve jeopardized the entire national airspace system.”

A training room also can serve as an emergency operations center, if needed. Since none of the windows in the tower open, there’s a special smoke exhaust system, in case a fire breaks out.

Of course, where aviation meets government, acronyms abound, from AWOS (the Automated Weather Observation System that continuously monitors current conditions, viewable at Bend's National Weather Service 3-day history page) to ATIS, the Automatic Terminal Information Service, which the FAA says is "a continuous broadcast of recorded non-control, routine aeronautical and meteorological information at busy airports."

Williams noted that when controllers are on duty, ATIS will be used, updated at least hour, then switch back to AWOS when air traffic systems end for the day.

Williams became the Bend Municipal Airport Director in the spring of 2020, having been a private pilot and airport director for more than 30 years. As KTVZ reported in 2021, she accomplished many firsts in aviation, historically a male-dominated field.

Curt Baney told Williams, “I’ve never seen a tower that looks as good as this one. I think you did a great job, end to end – very nice.”

The public will be able to get a close-up look at the October 29th ribbon-cutting, though not quite as extensive as these early tours.

So what will Williams do with all her “spare” time once the tower is operational? Could she become an air traffic controller herself?

“I did that in the military,” she said. But now: “I’m too old.”

She explained that FAA controllers age out of the system at 56 – except they can still work at ones like Bend’s new tower, because it doesn’t use radar to track the planes.