The Federal Aviation Administration has opened a new 121-foot air traffic control tower at Asheville Regional Airport in North Carolina, replacing a facility built in 1961. The tower is designed to give controllers modern infrastructure and technology as the airport scales up to handle rising demand in western North Carolina.
Federal funding covered much of the project, with $31.7 million from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act used to build the tower. The FAA also allocated $10 million from the same programme to expand and modernise the terminal, lifting gate capacity from five to 12.
The new tower opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on 7 August and features digital flight strips, fibre-optic communications, new digital radios and upgraded surveillance systems. The airport upgrade package forms part of a broader effort to match infrastructure with record regional growth while improving operational capacity for both air traffic control and passenger facilities. Administrative and technical improvements were planned around the same federal investment stream, with the tower and terminal work presented as linked projects.