Air traffic management
closely and this new tower is clearly different. Exceedingly narrow, with just enough room for maintenance ladders to snake up, this is obviously not a space for people to spend extended periods. That’s reiterated by the tower’s shape. Unlike its predecessor, City’s mast doesn’t mushroom out at the top, leaving no room for an observation deck. If you clambered all 206 steps up the mast, all you’d find is 14 cameras – each complete with special air compressors to keep out sugar dust. Tate and Lyle’s famous refinery, after all, is just down the road. To put it another way, London City’s control tower is unmanned – but hardly unstaffed. Peering out those 14 cameras is a team of experts, sitting in an office 70 miles away. Based in the Hampshire town of Swannick, NATS staff use the new tower as their proxy, its cameras offering a 360º view of the airport and its runway. This is obviously an impressive achievement, one Taylor emphasises is down to the right kit. “We have alternate routes that are completely separated,” he explains of the three networks connecting London with Hampshire. “There are no crossing points, no common points of failure of any kind, such that were there an interruption of any kind on one of those routes, we would have a seamless continuation of the data supply via other routes.” In practice, that means a controller in Swannick might not even notice if one of the links suddenly went dead.
That may explain how the air navigation service provider’s (ANSP) remote system works, and how it abides by what Mullan describes as the “first commandment” of aircraft control – that staff must have “continuous visual observation” over a given airport. But that doesn’t really reveal what benefits City’s mast offers over traditional towers. One way of understanding is by thinking again on the tower’s unusual shape. Given real estate is so precious at the airport, having a tall, thin mast, without needing to account for anyone inside, obviously saves money. Compared with the £149m they might have been obliged to fork out for a new manned tower, London City’s mast only cost £20m. Then there are those 14 cameras. Able to seamlessly zoom in on a specific aircraft, NATS staff no longer need to grab their binoculars every time they want a closer look. Nor do the advantages over binoculars end there. As Taylor explains, staring through a pair of enormous glasses necessarily forces the user to ignore anything in their periphery. But with a batch of screens in front of them, air traffic controllers can keep their eyes on several spots at once.
Keeping air traffic controllers physically separate from their stomping ground could offer other benefits too. In an emergency, or indeed a pandemic requiring social distancing, physical air traffic control towers often have to close. That
Future Airport /
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naturally disrupts service, for instance as happened at JFK in July 2021, when a leak in the tower delayed hundreds of flights. It goes without saying that keeping staff in a windowless bunker somewhere isn’t a foolproof alternative – but it could help.
Change in the air
There are signs, too, that this new universe of digital towers could yet overwhelm their brick- and-mortar counterparts more broadly. There are indications, in fact, that this is already happening: Heathrow is actively experimenting with a digital system, while Budapest has moved there already. In 2013, for its part, the FAA ordered the closure of 149 small control towers across the US. Given the merging opportunities digital towers offer, moreover, this trend may well continue. As Mullan explains, remote air traffic controllers could plausibly attend to one aerodrome for the first half of their shift, then switch their attention for the second, all without breaking the crucial first commandment of their profession. Of course, this raises the possibility that the unions are right, and that digital towers spell job losses for air traffic controllers everywhere. Mullan isn’t so sure. “I’m going to use the phrase ‘job changes’,” he says, emphasising that in quieter airports, air traffic controllers don’t always have much to do anyway. Taylor, for his part, is similarly optimistic. He suggests that digital towers could yet complement their glass and steel forebears, especially with the rise of new platforms that make them adaptable across different airports. “In my view, I see digital enhancement to existing physical towers in a hybrid type of deployment,” he says. “We’re working with airports and ANSPs around the world in deploying those at the moment.” Whatever happens, at any rate, it seems clear that Croydon’s pioneering monument of the sky is destined to become even more of a relic. ●
According to NATS, AI could help reclaim 20% of lost capacity caused by low visibility.
£149m
Potential cost of a traditional air traffic control tower.
Cato Institute £20m Reuters 31
Cost of the new digital tower at London City Airport.
NATS
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