The March 28 to 29, 2025 earthquake that struck central Myanmar exposed a vulnerability that pilots and controllers have quietly feared for years. The seismic event toppled the air traffic control tower at Naypyitaw International Airport and other facilities in the Mandalay and Naypyitaw areas, and reports from local outlets and international wire services say ATC staff were killed when the tower collapsed.

Loss of a control tower is not an abstract infrastructure problem. When the tower was destroyed, controllers, supervisors, and support staff died and the country lost irreplaceable situational awareness assets at the worst possible moment. Media reporting also described damage to radar and radio systems at both Naypyitaw and Mandalay, effectively reducing the nation to a single operational international airport at Yangon for relief flights. That combination of human loss and technical blackout is the precise failure mode that seismic design and contingency planning are meant to prevent.

From an operational perspective the immediate hazards are twofold. First, losing trained controllers is an acute human resource crisis. Replacing an experienced ATC team cannot be done overnight. Second, the sudden loss of surveillance and communications forces controllers and flight crews to revert to procedural control, which reduces capacity and raises complexity for arrivals and departures in congested or relief flight heavy airspace. ICAO standards and operational guidance describe procedural separation and contingency measures, but those options are capacity limited and more error prone than a fully functional surveillance and communications suite. Every minute of inefficiency in a disaster zone increases risk to aircraft and to life on the ground.

There are proven technical and programmatic solutions. Modern control towers at seismically active airports are designed with performance based seismic measures so they can remain standing and operational after strong earthquakes. The replacement SFO tower is a case in point. Its cast in place, vertically post tensioned concrete core and performance based seismic design aim to allow the tower to remain operational following very large events. Other design approaches include base isolation, tuned mass dampers, post tensioning and sacrificial or redundant elements to prevent catastrophic shear at the base. These are not science fiction. They are engineering choices taken at airports where risk and traffic justify the investment.

For Myanmar and similar low and middle income states that face seismic risk but lack deep capital budgets the menu of options should be pragmatic and prioritized. Short term actions that regulators and ANSPs can take now include: 1) rapid structural assessment of existing towers and life safety retrofits where collapse is possible, 2) hardening and relocating mission critical electronics off site or to seismically hardened rooms, 3) redundant power and communications paths with automatic failover, and 4) documented contingency procedures and cross training so adjacent units and military or humanitarian flight operators can assume parts of the traffic load. These measures preserve human life and keep airspace usable while longer term projects proceed.

Medium term strategies should include either retrofitting towers to meet performance objectives for operational continuity, or building new towers to modern seismic standards. Where complete replacement is unaffordable, focused retrofits to foundations and core shear walls can prevent the overturning or shearing failures that took lives in Myanmar. The Nisqually and other earthquakes taught ATC engineers that foundations, soils and pile design matter. Geotechnical mitigation against liquefaction and properly designed foundations are often where the return on investment is highest.

Digital alternatives deserve serious attention as well. Remote or virtual tower technology has matured since the first operational deployments in Sweden. Remote towers move the controller workstation from a vulnerable field site into a hardened operations center and provide high fidelity visual and sensor feeds over secure data links. In a country with a damaged tower and an intact sensor suite at the field, a remote tower can restore services quickly without waiting for complete structural reconstruction. Remote towers are not a universal panacea, but they are a practical intermediate option that reduces exposure of personnel to fragile structures.

Policy and funding levers must follow the technical fix. ICAO, ASEAN and donor agencies that mobilized for humanitarian relief in the quake now have a clear, operational case to support infrastructure resilience funding. Donors and ANSPs often fund runway repairs and terminal tents after disasters. They should also prioritize the control tower and surveillance redundancy because that investment multiplies the usefulness of every relief flight. International technical assistance should be targeted and prescriptive. Seismically vulnerable towers should be triaged and either retrofitted as essential facilities or replaced with hardened facilities and redundant remote operations.

Finally, there is a human factor angle. Controllers operate in cramped, high stress environments. Tower design must protect life but also preserve the ergonomic and cognitive environment controllers need to do the job. Self centering post tensioned cores, separated base buildings, and redundant cabs can keep controllers safe and working, which is the point. As a pilot and safety consultant I have seen how fragile certain nodes in the aviation system can be. When a single tower collapse kills colleagues and knocks out radar, the downstream consequences ripple through relief logistics, commercial operations and safety margins. Myanmar’s tragedy should be a call to action for ANSPs, regulators and donors everywhere to treat control towers as critical lifeline infrastructure and design them accordingly.