The Federal Aviation Administration is rejecting a request to upgrade Austin's airspace to the same level surrounding the nation's busiest airports.
Class B airspace — one notch above Austin's Class C airspace — is highly regulated to reduce the risk of midair collisions. Pilots must follow stricter rules, and air traffic controllers have greater authority.
A reclassification to Class B would also have triggered an automatic 15% pay hike for air traffic controllers in the short-staffed control tower at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
The tower is operating with fewer than half the 60 controllers recommended in a staffing target set by the FAA and the controllers' union, forcing a bigger workload and mandatory overtime.
"The FAA denied Class B status for Austin in June," said Congressman Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, who's been pushing the agency since 2023 to upgrade ABIA's classification. "They've been unresponsive to inquiries about that."
The FAA has also been tight-lipped with KUT News. An agency spokesperson has said only that the Class B request is still under review.
The FAA's air traffic manager in Austin, who oversees controllers at ABIA, began compiling documents to make the case for an airspace upgrade as far back as November 2023, according to documents obtained by KUT News through the Freedom of Information Act.
But ABIA technically isn't busy enough to step up to Class B, according to agency regulations. While ABIA does meet some requirements, a Class B airport must have at least 300,000 takeoffs and landings per year. FAA data show ABIA had fewer than 261,000 in 2024.
However, internal e-mails showed some regional FAA staff were supportive of moving Austin to Class B or called the move overdue. One manager offered advice on how to make the most compelling argument to senior leadership.
The internal conversations noted Austin is close to meeting some Class B benchmarks and already exceeds others, such as the number of people boarding a plane each year at ABIA. The increased number of aircraft has made the skies over Austin more crowded and international flights have outgrown the current Class C airspace, an FAA official noted.
While 2025 passenger numbers have dipped a few percentage points from post-pandemic highs, ABIA is on track to get busier in the coming years.
The city-owned airport is expanding the Barbara Jordan Terminal and building a $1 billion concourse scheduled to open in the early 2030s.
ABIA is busier than many Class B airports
Some existing Class B airports handle far less traffic than ABIA, according to a KUT News analysis of FAA data.
At least eight Class B facilities have fewer flights than Austin, including in Memphis, Tennessee; Tampa, Florida; St. Louis; Cincinnati; Pittsburgh; Kansas City, Missouri; and New Orleans. Cleveland had fewer than half as many takeoffs and landings as ABIA in 2024.
"They were originally Class B airports because they were busy hub airports," said Michael McCormick, a former FAA vice president of air traffic operations and now a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. "As airlines consolidated, they shut down hubs at those airports, and that's why they're no longer as busy."
Under its own rules, the FAA must study if Class B status should be revoked at airports that haven't met traffic benchmarks for five years and aren't expected to for another five years.
"I've never seen [Class B status] taken away," McCormick said.
Class B could have helped retain controllers
The upgrade to Class B would have bumped ABIA from a Level 9 to a Level 10 facility under the FAA's ranking system. This would have automatically increased the minimum salary for certified controllers from $123,305 to $141,804, according to pay tables published by the FAA. The maximum salary would have grown from $166,462 to $191,435, not including overtime. Trainees would have seen their salaries increase, too.
While the FAA is facing a shortage of 3,000 certified air traffic controllers nationwide, a pay bump could help retain the dwindling number of staff in the tower at ABIA. Most controllers are working six-day work weeks over a schedule that rotates them through mornings, afternoons and overnight shifts.
At least one Austin controller has left to work in Australia, Rep. Doggett said. That country's government-owned airspace organization is recruiting English-speaking controllers worldwide by offering relocation assistance, promises of a better work-life balance and a path to permanent residency.
Possible 'Super Charlie' designation
While Austin's request for Class B status was denied, the airport might get something else from the FAA. The local FAA team has been working on a parallel request to expand Austin's Class C airspace boundaries. This was done two years ago in Nashville.
The change to a so-called Super Charlie status wouldn't come with more stringent rules on pilots that ban them from entering the airspace without explicit permission from air traffic control, though. And the tower's overworked controllers wouldn't get an automatic pay bump.
An expanded Class C status would provide controllers with some additional airspace authority. But it could take awhile.
"[ABIA tower staff] are told that this will take at least two years after approval," Doggett said. "So this is bureaucratic delay on top of delay at a time that we really could use a better margin of safety there, given the severe shortage of air traffic controllers."
