Air traffi c management
control Remote
Air traffi c control towers have long been synonymous with the airports they serve, playing a crucial role in keeping fl ying safe and effi cient for a century or more. But with the benefi ts of new technologies, are their days numbered? Andrea Valentino talks to Andy Taylor, chief solutions offi cer at air navigation service provider NATS, and Conor Mullan, managing director of air traffi c consultancy Think Research, to understand the rise of digital towers, how they’re especially useful in airports without much room to expand – and how the future might belong to a partnership between old and new forms of air traffi c control.
t didn’t look like much: a wooden shed on legs, with big square windows and a weathervane. It could almost have been a beach hut or an idyllic mountain chalet – if it were anywhere but Croydon. Yet it was here, on a spot now flanked by a shopping centre and a Costa Coffee drive-through, that the air traffic control tower was born. It started in 1920, when the UK’s Air Ministry unveiled Croydon Aerodrome as the place where British aviation would be run. Read through the order today and it
I Future Airport /
www.futureairport.com
feels wonderfully archaic. “The wireless control of all British stations,” the memo proclaims, “will be carried out by Croydon”. Officials in the tower, a full 15ft above the earth, are advised to use “telephony” to give information to incoming pilots. Today, of course, air traffic control towers rely on far more than telephony. In Europe alone, there are 60 major control towers, run by 37 air navigation service providers, each using a sophisticated mix of technology to keep their eyes on the sky.
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