Agreed. But no ATCO will be dedicated to a remote tower position open 1hr per day. This guy/gal would have another job the rest of the day.
Maybe this position will be used for several airports on one day, each at its own time frame.
skydriller wrote:
As someone who has had direct experience of “remote monitoring” in a different area of critical operations, where someone is overlooking more than one project realtime, this REALLY worries me
Depends on how they set it up. Fully agree that it would be quite critical if the same people needed to deal with flights at different Airports at the same time
If it’s, however, that they have to handle one arrival at airport x at 9 and the next one at airport y at 10 I don’t see any issue.
skydriller wrote:
As someone who has had direct experience of “remote monitoring” in a different area of critical operations, where someone is overlooking more than one project realtime, this REALLY worries me. Getting a “picture” of what is happening in more than one place with different operating parameters is not an easy thing to do and I have seen first hand how instructions can easily get mixed up and how the wrong instruction can be given to a project based on the situation at a different location.
Sweden has four remote towered airports (ESKS, ESNO, ESNN, ESSL). The ESNO remote tower has been in operation since 2015. I haven’t heard anything about safety incidents.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Sweden has four remote towered airports (ESKS, ESNO, ESNN, ESSL). The ESNO remote tower has been in operation since 2015. I haven’t heard anything about safety incidents.
@Airborne_Again what are their open hours, out of curiousity? Is it very short one or 24/7?
Thanks!
arj1 wrote:
what are their open hours, out of curiousity? Is it very short one or 24/7?
From next week the TWR hours are
ESKS CLSD
ESNN MON-FRI 1200-1500, SAT CLSD, SUN 1200-1500
ESNO MON-FRI 0730-0900, SAT CLSD, SUN 1600-1730
ESSL MON-FRI 0500-1615, SAT-SUN 1445-1615
I don’t think these opening hours are representative as this is both the holiday period in Sweden and many airports have reduced hours due to the pandemic.
Malibuflyer wrote:
If it’s, however, that they have to handle one arrival at airport x at 9 and the next one at airport y at 10 I don’t see any issue.
This is a VERY different thing to what I am talking about.
That is akin to having one project in operation, finishing completely with it, then starting another.
Even if there have been no incidents to date, if there is one controller simultaneously operating more than one airport tower at the same time, then I would be concerned.
skydriller wrote:
Even if there have been no incidents to date, if there is one controller simultaneously operating more than one airport tower at the same time, then I would be concerned.
Keeping in mind that they may have many controllers on rest/standby/coffee/…, I don’t think it would be such a big issue.
Flugleiter posts moved here
What’s the point of remote operation of an airport such as London City? It has enough traffic that controllers must be dealing with it full time.
The advantage of remote towers is that controllers can share their time between several airports with occasional traffic.
