Photo credit: Avinor/Øystein Løwer
Airspace Article
Footage of digital tower demonstration – Credit: NAV CANADA
“We aim at introducing multiple towers operations in 2024, while Avinor will be the first company in the world to introduce this, the real motivation lies within the fact that we can run our tower operations in a substantially more efficient manner, both economically and operationally.”
Jan Gunnar Pedersen
Executive Vice President at Avinor Air Navigations Services.
“Digital facilities provide an opportunity to re-imagine how we deliver service, and where we deliver it from, allowing NAV CANADA to respond effectively and efficiently to changes in airport traffic demand.”
Mark Cooper
NAV CANADA’s Vice President and Chief Technology and Information Officer.
North America, a region that might be expected to have a deep interest in digital towers given numerous small airports, presents a mixed picture.
NAV CANADA has accelerated its investment in the concept. A digital facility serving Ontario’s Kingston Airport will be used to evaluate the technology and operating procedures as part of a multi-year digital tower project. The ANSP reports this work will provide a foundation for the creation of a potential digital hub in Kingston that could provide air traffic services to airports in approximately 4-6 years’ time.
“Digital facilities provide an opportunity to re-imagine how we deliver service, and where we deliver it from, allowing NAV CANADA to respond effectively and efficiently to changes in airport traffic demand,” says Mark Cooper, NAV CANADA’s Vice President and Chief Technology and Information Officer.
South of the border, however, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is notably behind the curve. A project at Leesburg Executive Airport is not proceeding while another at Colorado Northern Regional Airport is still some way off. The aim is to assess digital tower projects at a test centre before certification. And though the FAA reportedly accepts the cost-effectiveness of digital tower projects, it believes the benefit is site-specific. This is backed up by its intention to stick with traditional towers in multiple upgrade projects at smaller airports.
Despite this, with digital towers from New Zealand to Iceland, it seems the technology has come of age. Safety has been proven, there are clear cost advantages from serving multiple airports from a single remote location, and there are important sustainability gains too. The preponderance of digital towers in Scandinavia might well be the shape of things to come.
Mixed picture
Digital tower projects, either implemented or in testing, are now found throughout the world though Europe and Scandinavia, dominate. Indeed, in Norway and Sweden, digital towers are becoming commonplace and the next step – multiple airports controlled from a single control room – is already established.
Norwegian ANSP, Avinor, has a digital tower centre at Bodo controlling 11 airports. As Avinor begins decommissioning multiple physical towers, the importance of the Bodo centre will doubtless increase. Moreover, the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has approved advanced sequential operations as a first step towards multiple tower operations in 2024. Advanced sequential operations allow a single operator to serve two airport towers during one shift, from the same working position.
“We aim at introducing multiple towers operations in 2024,” says Jan Gunnar Pedersen, Executive Vice President at Avinor Air Navigations Services. “While Avinor will be the first company in the world to introduce this, the real motivation lies within the fact that we can run our tower operations in a substantially more efficient manner, both economically and operationally.”
Meanwhile, four airports in Sweden are served from Sundsvall and a digital centre in Stockholm, already controlling multiple airports, is being designed to handle up to 24 facilities.
Scandinavian success
Digital, or remote, towers have more than two decades of history since the idea first saw the light of day. The concept came off the drawing board and into real world operations in 2015 at Örnsköldsvik in Sweden and just four years later Scandinavian Mountains Airport in Dalarna, Sweden, became the world’s first airport to be built without a physical control tower.
The digital tower concept is simple though the technologies behind it are anything but. Essentially, various live data feeds, including several high-definition cameras, allow controllers in a remote location to manage air service via an array of screens.
The original aim was to improve the viability and cost-effectiveness of rural airports as they would no longer need full-time controllers on site for a handful of flights. Such has been the success of the concept, however, that digital towers and the business models associated with them have evolved rapidly.
In 2021, London City Airport (LCY) became the first major international airport to be served by digital towers. A 360-degree airfield view is provided by 14 high-definition cameras mounted on a 50-metre mast. All information is relayed through super-fast fibre connections to UK air navigation service provider (ANSP) NATS’ air traffic control centre. There, more than 100 miles away, air traffic controllers manage flights at LCY from a specially designed control room.
The airport reports the digital tower has been a complete success and is looking to further its capabilities in safety and security.
Photo credit: Avinor/Øystein Løwer
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North America, a region that might be expected to have a deep interest in digital towers given numerous small airports, presents a mixed picture.
NAV CANADA has accelerated its investment in the concept. A digital facility serving Ontario’s Kingston Airport will be used to evaluate the technology and operating procedures as part of a multi-year digital tower project. The ANSP reports this work will provide a foundation for the creation of a potential digital hub in Kingston that could provide air traffic services to airports in approximately 4-6 years’ time.
“Digital facilities provide an opportunity to re-imagine how we deliver service, and where we deliver it from, allowing NAV CANADA to respond effectively and efficiently to changes in airport traffic demand,” says Mark Cooper, NAV CANADA’s Vice President and Chief Technology and Information Officer.
South of the border, however, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is notably behind the curve. A project at Leesburg Executive Airport is not proceeding while another at Colorado Northern Regional Airport is still some way off. The aim is to assess digital tower projects at a test centre before certification. And though the FAA reportedly accepts the cost-effectiveness of digital tower projects, it believes the benefit is site-specific. This is backed up by its intention to stick with traditional towers in multiple upgrade projects at smaller airports.
Despite this, with digital towers from New Zealand to Iceland, it seems the technology has come of age. Safety has been proven, there are clear cost advantages from serving multiple airports from a single remote location, and there are important sustainability gains too. The preponderance of digital towers in Scandinavia might well be the shape of things to come.
Mixed picture
The digital tower concept is simple though the technologies behind it are anything but. Essentially, various live data feeds, including several high-definition cameras, allow controllers in a remote location to manage air service via an array of screens.
The original aim was to improve the viability and cost-effectiveness of rural airports as they would no longer need full-time controllers on site for a handful of flights. Such has been the success of the concept, however, that digital towers and the business models associated with them have evolved rapidly.
In 2021, London City Airport (LCY) became the first major international airport to be served by digital towers. A 360-degree airfield view is provided by 14 high-definition cameras mounted on a 50-metre mast. All information is relayed through super-fast fibre connections to UK air navigation service provider (ANSP) NATS’ air traffic control centre. There, more than 100 miles away, air traffic controllers manage flights at LCY from a specially designed control room.
The airport reports the digital tower has been a complete success and is looking to further its capabilities in safety and security.
Digital, or remote, towers have more than two decades of history since the idea first saw the light of day. The concept came off the drawing board and into real world operations in 2015 at Örnsköldsvik in Sweden and just four years later Scandinavian Mountains Airport in Dalarna, Sweden, became the world’s first airport to be built without a physical control tower.
Digital tower projects, either implemented or in testing, are now found throughout the world though Europe and Scandinavia, dominate. Indeed, in Norway and Sweden, digital towers are becoming commonplace and the next step – multiple airports controlled from a single control room – is already established.
Norwegian ANSP, Avinor, has a digital tower centre at Bodo controlling 11 airports. As Avinor begins decommissioning multiple physical towers, the importance of the Bodo centre will doubtless increase. Moreover, the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has approved advanced sequential operations as a first step towards multiple tower operations in 2024. Advanced sequential operations allow a single operator to serve two airport towers during one shift, from the same working position.
“We aim at introducing multiple towers operations in 2024,” says Jan Gunnar Pedersen, Executive Vice President at Avinor Air Navigations Services. “While Avinor will be the first company in the world to introduce this, the real motivation lies within the fact that we can run our tower operations in a substantially more efficient manner, both economically and operationally.”
Meanwhile, four airports in Sweden are served from Sundsvall and a digital centre in Stockholm, already controlling multiple airports, is being designed to handle up to 24 facilities.
Scandinavian success
Airspace Article