I beg to differ as an air traffic controller the FAA has cut our staffing everywhere not just the little airports. The FAA is trying to get as much as they can for as little cost as they can until something happens, then the FAA will play clean up, staff us up for a little while until people forget and then go right back to the way it was.

As far as the little airport, Birmingham ATCT is busier than ATL on a lot of its mids. A lot of these smaller airports have maint facilities for the airlines, TYS-has BTA and a NWA commuter hanger. They also have small cargo operations, Check Haulers, Medical Flights, etc. LEX has around 10 flights between 5:30 and 6:30 A.M. While that may not be much to you, it is to the one controller working everything. That lone controller could be giving you a clearance on the ground, while working on a handoff to ZID with an A/C out of 9,000 twenty miles away from the airport, working on a release with TMU for an A/C going up to LGA and taking a UPS point out on an aircraft going into SDF.

I know when it comes to safety, I don't mind if there are ten controllers in that tower at 6:00 A.M. all the more eyes to watch over me. But why would you even say that you are alright with one controller? That is like saying you would be alright with one pilot in a 737, I know I wouldn't be. Maybe it is just a lack of understanding from you on what exactly we do.

So in closing for you to say there just isn't enough traffic to have more than one, how do you know? Do you work there? Are you an air traffic controller? We are suppossed to have more than one so we can have checks and balances, so we can watch over the sky's safely. Instead of saying they don't rate the second controller because they aren't busy enough, you as a pilot should be screaming at the FAA to add that body in the tower. Wether it could have saved the COMAIR flight or not, and the fact that we will never know, we should look at the fact of it could have and demand the FAA lives by its own policies.