News London City first UK airport to get remote digital air traffic control

[Notebook]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39960993

London City is to become the first UK airport to replace its air traffic controllers with a remotely operated digital system.
Instead of sitting in a tower overlooking the runway, controllers will be 80 miles away, watching live footage from high-definition cameras.
The new system, due to be completed in 2018, will be tested for a year before becoming fully operational in 2019.
It has already been tested in Australia, Sweden, Norway and Ireland.

 

[zerofay32]

There is an airport or two in the USA that will be testing a similar system in the coming years.

One of the airports is Leesburg Executive Airport in Virginia.

 

[JMW]

Hope it works as I live "next door" :shifty:

 

[Andy44]

I'll be the first old timer to say "That sounds like a horrible idea. Now get off my lawn!"

 

[mjanicki]

There was no mention of this in the article, so perhaps someone knows:

Why does the digital tower need to be remote? Whey can they not simply upgrade the existing tower/cab to use the new digital measures, or build a new one on site? I don't understand why it needs to be 120 mi away.

 

[Evil_Onyx]

mjanicki I think it has more to do with the available facilities at Nats than any need to have it on site at London City. It could be to allow for better staffing and/or better information flow.

I'm with Andy44 I can see some positives, but so many things could go wrong with it, that simply would not happen if a controller could simply look out a window. Some road works cutting the network by accident, or a power outage (I know they have back ups, but with a remote system you add an extra points of failure)

 

[Andy44]

Automation: where saving money meets technology worship, with a dose of "what could possibly go wrong?" thrown in for flavor.