Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Situational Awareness; Troubleshooting; Communication Breakdown
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
Procedure; ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings; Airport
I work in a contract tower at EDC; Austin Executive. The tower cab does not have a field lighting panel nor the ability to turn on/off runway lights other than activating with a microphone. This allows the lights to stay on for 15 minutes. We may call the FBO to ask an operations person to turn the lights on but it may take several calls before we are successful.This evening it took three phone calls before I was successful in getting the lights manually turned on by the airport operations. In the meantime I had activated the lights using my microphone hoping that Ops would turn them on before the lights turned off. Aircraft X had just landed Runway 13 and exited the runway when the lights turned off. Had they timed out a minute before when they were in the landing phase it could have been an accident. I have also had the lights time out when a Cessna was taking the runway for departure roll on Runway 31. Again; had the lights timed out 10 seconds later it could have been horrible if they had been committed to departure roll and the lights turned off.I have many decades in both control towers and approach controls. I have never been in a control tower that does not have control of the lights. Airport management apparently does not want to pay for the install. I don't think they have factored in the amount of a lawsuit if; God forbid; there is a fatal accident because the lights turned off when an aircraft was in a critical phase of flight. Please help bring this to the attention of an authority that is able to address this situation before we have an accident.
EDC Tower Controller reported Tower does not have full control over runway lighting which can time out during critical phases of flight.