Narrative:

The contract towers with radar routinely work VFR aircraft on practice approaches in satellite airspace. We do not allow the FAA towers to do this; only the contract towers for some reason. They are not required to point out or coordinate these aircraft even though they are operating in our airspace. They issue these aircraft a discrete beacon code. We only see a partial data tag on our scope. It is impossible for me to separate my traffic from these aircraft because I have no idea what altitude they are climbing to; if they are going to turn left; right; climb; descend; etc. Since they are maneuvering on the instrument approach final for the airport; it puts them in the worst possible place for my IFR/VFR arrivals. I have complained numerous times to supervisors about this unsafe procedure and was told it is not my responsibility to separate from those aircraft because they are operating outside of class B. I even pointed out this potential situation to the supervisor on the wall a couple minutes before this happened. A BE58 was an IFR inbound to gky that I had descended to 030 on a vector to gky. There was a VFR aircraft on a gky tower tag that had been doing multiple practice approaches at gky and was southbound apparently for another approach. I issued traffic when they were 4 or 5 miles apart. I assumed the VFR would stay at or below 025 but noticed him climbing higher. I tried to keep updating the BE58 on the traffic and that the traffic appeared to be climbing. The targets merged with 200 ft or less of vertical separation. The BE58 never reported the traffic in sight until they were past. Recommendation; I am afraid there is going to be an accident because we have 2 controllers working airplanes in the same airspace with neither one knowing what the other is doing. I do not believe these contract towers even have the authority/certification to provide any type of radar services to begin with. The VFR aircraft are asking the tower for service (why else would they be on a discrete code) and are issued a discrete beacon code so they probably believe that they are being separated from the other traffic. Since they are maneuvering on the instrument approach final for the airport; it puts them in the worst possible place for my IFR/VFR arrivals. It is impossible for me to separate my traffic from these aircraft because I have no idea what altitude they are climbing to; if they are going to turn left; right; climb; descend; etc. We do not allow any of the FAA towers to work VFR practice approaches in our airspace. Why do we let the contract towers do it? Since these airports are below class B it is impossible to keep the arrivals in class B. They have to descend below it to land. With gky being in close proximity to dfw it is imperative to get the gky arrivals down as soon as possible which makes the situation even worse. Since the satellite controller is working the arrivals and departures already; it would only make sense that they also work the VFR practice approaches like we do at all the other satellite airports. Another solution would be to have the tower restrict the practice approaches to maintain at or below 025. Then at least then we would have something to use for separating from them.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: D10 Controller expressed concern regarding the alleged practice of allowing local contract towers to provide RADAR vectors to practice approach aircraft; noting no procedures are in place to exchange traffic or provide separation from D10 traffic.

Narrative: The Contract Towers with RADAR routinely work VFR aircraft on practice approaches in satellite airspace. We do not allow the FAA Towers to do this; only the Contract Towers for some reason. They are not required to point out or coordinate these aircraft even though they are operating in our airspace. They issue these aircraft a discrete Beacon Code. We only see a partial Data Tag on our scope. It is impossible for me to separate my traffic from these aircraft because I have no idea what altitude they are climbing to; if they are going to turn left; right; climb; descend; etc. Since they are maneuvering on the instrument approach final for the airport; it puts them in the worst possible place for my IFR/VFR arrivals. I have complained numerous times to supervisors about this unsafe procedure and was told it is not my responsibility to separate from those aircraft because they are operating outside of Class B. I even pointed out this potential situation to the supervisor on the wall a couple minutes before this happened. A BE58 was an IFR inbound to GKY that I had descended to 030 on a vector to GKY. There was a VFR aircraft on a GKY Tower tag that had been doing multiple practice approaches at GKY and was southbound apparently for another approach. I issued traffic when they were 4 or 5 miles apart. I assumed the VFR would stay at or below 025 but noticed him climbing higher. I tried to keep updating the BE58 on the traffic and that the traffic appeared to be climbing. The targets merged with 200 FT or less of vertical separation. The BE58 never reported the traffic in sight until they were past. Recommendation; I am afraid there is going to be an accident because we have 2 controllers working airplanes in the same airspace with neither one knowing what the other is doing. I do not believe these Contract Towers even have the authority/certification to provide any type of RADAR services to begin with. The VFR aircraft are asking the Tower for service (why else would they be on a discrete code) and are issued a discrete beacon code so they probably believe that they are being separated from the other traffic. Since they are maneuvering on the instrument approach final for the airport; it puts them in the worst possible place for my IFR/VFR arrivals. It is impossible for me to separate my traffic from these aircraft because I have no idea what altitude they are climbing to; if they are going to turn left; right; climb; descend; etc. We do not allow any of the FAA Towers to work VFR practice approaches in our airspace. Why do we let the Contract Towers do it? Since these airports are below Class B it is impossible to keep the arrivals in Class B. They have to descend below it to land. With GKY being in close proximity to DFW it is imperative to get the GKY arrivals down as soon as possible which makes the situation even worse. Since the satellite controller is working the arrivals and departures already; it would only make sense that they also work the VFR practice approaches like we do at all the other satellite airports. Another solution would be to have the Tower restrict the practice approaches to maintain at or below 025. Then at least then we would have something to use for separating from them.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.