Columbia Regional (KCOU)

Columbia Regional is a mid-Missouri contract tower serving the university town between St. Louis and Kansas City. Two crossing runways handle the field: a seventy-four-hundred-foot primary and a crosswind runway, both cut into rolling farmland.

Columbia is a general-aviation majority operation with a handful of daily regional jets to sequence in among the light traffic, a SkyWest, Lindbergh and Envoy feed. You work Columbia Tower. North flow lands and departs the 2; south flow uses the 20, with the crosswind runway as overflow. The cycle publishes no arrivals here and no SIDs, so every IFR flight enters on the real approach feeders and every departure leaves on a heading you assign. The northeast sector is fix-dense, fed by the real RNAV waypoints on the St. Louis and Kansas City routes, so most of your inbound work comes from that corner.

This is the Steady tier: a light board with just enough airline traffic to keep the pattern honest. A gentle on-ramp with a taste of scheduled service.

Runway layout