The END of Airport Towers as we Know Them?!
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- čas přidán 19. 01. 2024
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What exactly are Remote Control Towers? Could they actually replace control towers as we know them? And is this really a good idea?
In this video I will go through some of the history behind existing Air Traffic Control Towers and then bring you in to the revolutionary future of Remote Control Tower and what improvements they might bring.
I hope you will find this episode interesting and if you do, remember to subscribe, like and comment!
//Petter
Stay tuned!
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Below you will find the links to videos and sources used in this episode.
• Old Vs New Skype Ringtone
• How Much Data Does an ...
• Large Remote Tower Cen...
• The technology behind ...
• Wright Brothers First ...
• Concrete arrows across...
• How did air traffic co...
• Airport - first-ever f...
• Inside the world's fir...
• Primary Radar or Prima...
• Intro to Radar
• To The Control Tower |...
• To The Control Tower |...
• These are the HEROES b...
• Remote control: London...
• What It Takes To Be An...
• Sony XBR Intro 1984
• Remote Technologies in...
• Working with a digital...
• Xite x Office Manageme...
• Digital Air Traffic Co...
• Drone Tracking - Extended
• Paris-Charles-de-Gaull...
• Remote Tower for Multi...
• Heathrow control tower...
• Dublin visual control ...
• Remote Tower Operation...
• The Technology: Searid...
• How Airplane Collision... - Zábava
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Are there any backups for when the virtual windows go out aka black out?
+MentourNow, get another sponsor. Just take a casual search of what certified health professionals say about "betterhelp".
Especially aviation people need access to good mental health care, we haven't forgotten the GermanWings suicide.
@@enysuntra1347 People said that under all the previous videos with that scam, no reaction. Mentour is just greedy ****. Remember, he is also the scumbag who blamed two crews killed by 737 max crashed, stated he would immediately bring them back to service (this aged nicely, eh?), and said he trusts Boeing, all because he flies 737 and doesn't want people to crash his job by switching to airlines flying safe Airbuses. Money doesn't stink of blood, eh?
You have to have known about the issues surrounding this sponsor, yet took the deal anyway. I've been watching your channel for years, and am very disappointed. I take mental health and privacy very seriously. Your sponsor does not. Sell me a ball shaver or something. I'd be fine with that!
Wait wasn't betterhelp selling private patient data to Facebook and marketers? Even those data that they said is only between them and the "therapists"?
I work at a very busy Ramp Control in the US. We have a lot of crossing intersections and ground movement. We have implemented this system from Saab and we use 2 camera towers due to how large our control area is and 2 180degree parabola panel displays. Some of the best features is Low Light vision. Before you would need to look at the wing lights to tell how an aircraft was orientated at night. Now you can literally see them clear as day at night. Data Tags, we were able to tie in FAA ASD-X from the tower into it and we get their Callsigns that follow them on screen. They are also Geofenced so we don't see any aircraft that are airborne, on runways, or on the other side of the airport. Supplemental Cameras are game changing, anywhere the camera towers cannot see we can put a secondary camera and feed that onto the display. We have about 6-8 of these on each display and we can add as many as we want. All Cameras run on Point to Point fiber lines and cannot be remotely accessed or tampered with. Operationally we are the largest operator of Remote Tower in the US. We constantly have tours with the FAA, Airlines, Airport Authorities, and Foreign Governments looking to implement this technology not just for Ramp Control but Air Traffic as well.
Great reply I work in a Ramp Tower as well
Y'all r over my head (pun intended), so I'm going back to my PodRacer now.
PS: dont trust the little, winged fella faking a Mandalorian accent.
Anyone got a 3/8" spanner?
Where is it?
That was my thought as well. It does not change the work and the workload that much, except for being able to possibly tie in further away resources additionally to those likely on site, but certain aspects like the Augmented Reality Stuff if you want to give it a fancy name, like the ADS-X data for easier identification or aircraft as well as possibly ground vehicles, close up camera views from other cameras closer to the situation or also showing a different spectrum than you regular video stream like low light (some may call it night vision) or IR cameras can add so much benefits and even reduce stress levels. This may work as well in a Hybrid setup, but I think those things really shine in a fully "virtual" control room with large screens all around that still allow for a visual overview.
The only thing I see that requires a different approach on the task is, what is the backup plan if such a remote control center, despite all redundancies and robustness fails (say a fire in the controll room or something for whatever reason knocking over the one camera tower, as unlikely as it may be). I guess that would immediately require closing the airport.
But I guess a fire due to for example some electrical defect could cause the same issue for just any traditional tower as well. As possibly an earthquake will, a power failure etc.
But from a certain level we should also not hang around on "whatever theoretically can fail" possibilities as well.
All redundancy etc. does, is reduce the likelihood of something failing to a degree where things become really unlikely and mostly theoretical scenarios. But there always, with all options remains some small possibility of failure we have to accept. And not to forget, each decimal position further we get with availability in percentage gets exponentially more expensive. As soon as someone promises a completely uninterrupted and 100 % available system, I guess thats the right time to become really sceptical.
That sounds awesome! Great to hear it really does elevate the working environment for you guys!
I’m not sold on the idea of remote towers, I would compare it to an airline training their pilots on 2 or 3 different aircraft types. Each airport have their own unique procedures. I can see controllers mixing up minimum descent’s altitudes etc, if they have more than two or three airports under their control during a shift.
That’s a very valid point.
But many of those altitude alerts are integrated with the radar software and generate automatic alerts, which reduces the need for each controller (who may be working multiple runways / approaches) to be laser-focused.
Not really, it's far from optimal to be relaying on alarms etc. You need to be in positive control and not reacting to alarms.
Tests have been made with automatic ATC Systems where controllers only intervene when needed. It didn't work out well at all. The risk of mixing up rules/regulations/geography will most likely be the number one issue to let controllers work several airports as t once or even different ones during the same shift.
Don't get me wrong it's going to become operational. Way too much money is at stake here to throw it in the bin.
Well if your operational expertise and qualifications is operating a motor scooter anything's possible
I think it's important to note that some of these remote tower systems with multiple airports per controller, are applied at airports located in uncontrolled airspace and manned by AFIS officers instead of tower controllers. This means they have an informational and observational duty instead of a controlling one and cannot issue instructions. At least that's how it works in Norway.
As a private pilot I landed in Saarbruecken last year and the feeling was quite weird. The controller in Leipzig only has a few cameras and cannot cover the whole apron. She kind of guiding me approximately to the avionics workshop. I learned that there’s no place where I can pay the landing fees. A feeling like landing in a ghost airport, not a desert one, with a ghost talking at you 😊
I would hate that
That's was part of my comment but from a passengers point ov view
Saab has been pushing the remote control tower idea along with radar and naval products. I saw this being hyped in UAE.
Kind of like the movie oblivion where tom cruise constantly talks to the all seeing AI mothership while flying around and landing on remote places
Clear example of poor implementation. sad
As the head of security for London City Airport, I was the biggest sceptic when the digital.tower was installed. A few years on I have to say my opinion has changed completely. In any weather and at the busiest times with planes literally taking off at minimum distances before others land, its proved faultless. Its been a ideal solution for LCY.
20 years Tower control in Australia, most of it in tropical airports: local knowledge of weather conditions is a massive advantage. Knowing the subtle hints of when extremely variable weather conditions signal when an imminent (or sudden) change from VMC to IMC, or when a runway change is needed, are vital.
It’s just one factor however, perhaps one technology can overcome.
We will find out soon enough when Western Sydney International goes live.
@@chrisw4578Is Western Sydney intended to have a remote tower?
@@artistjoh The Construction Plan (westernsydney.com.au/sites/default/files/Construction%20Plan.pdf) states, "ASA has notified WSA that it is considering deployment of a digital tower solution, which may change ASA’s infrastructure and where its located, however until final confirmation of this change WSA will continue to progress planning for the existing ATCT infrastructure." A digital tower has been tabled in parliamentary committee papers (www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Public_Works/AirservicesWesternSydney/Report/Chapter_2_-_Aviation_Rescue_Fire_Fighting_Facilities_Navigation_Aids_and_Digital_Aerodrome_Serv section 2.16 onward)
I cannot imagine Airservices Australia progressing two tower options simultaneously. However, I cannot find much this on the Airservices Australia web site beyond "Digital Aerodrome Services" at WSIA appearing in "Our Lines of Business" (reporting.airservicesaustralia.com/corporate-plan-2022-2023/our-lines-of-business) and announcing fancy hybrid-electric ARFF vehicles (e.g. www.airservicesaustralia.com/tag/western-sydney-international-airport/).
@@artistjoh (I posted a reply yesterday but it seems to have gone AWOL. This reply contains no URLs but all information is searchable.)
Western Sydney Airport's (WSA) construction plan says that WSA has been advised that Airservices Australia favours a digital tower. Digital Aerodrome Services (DAS) are put forward as one of Airservices Australia's "Lines of Business" on their web site, and they expressed a preference for DAS as the solution in Australian Parliament's Joint Committee on Public Works report 4/2023. Airservices Australia has, AFAICT, communicated little on WSA or DAS through their web site. I cannot see that they will be progressing two different tower options in parallel.
@@chrisw4578 Thank you. I guess it is a sign of the times, although I personally would prefer eyeballs and binoculars for those inevitable emrgencies when electronics go down.
The main concerns I have with concentrating multiple ATC/GTC's in one location would be 1. general operational redundancy (disaster control), and 2. quality of implementation.
1. - If ANY incident happens to shut down a central traffic control, there would be multiple airports, and potentially dozens or more aircrafts-in-flight involved. Who/how would those aircraft be immediately re-assigned/guided/helped in time to avoid safety incidents or accidents ?
2. technical equipment and installations are subject to errors and breakdowns. System and equipment redundancy is not a major issue, but latent defects in installation, and communication breakdowns (electricity; IT providers; broken cables etc.) could 'sabotage' individual remote operations unpredictably and dangerously.
I do believe the single main object here is cost-cutting at the potential expense of customer (passenger) safety. All the technical advantages you describe can also be incorporated into on-field control facilities, and remote ATC/GTC should be limited to very low-traffic airfields, with a prudent limit on the amount of airfields controlled from any one location.
Theres a reason people dont support flying planes remotely. Its surprising that people are ok with towers being remote. And if you need backups for your main remote tower then what if theres a problem with the backup. Eventually it becomes impractical and you might as well have stuck with the original tower in person. And if people dont want to go in to work then maybe dont hire them or dont put an airport there.
I agree. The current system has one huge advantage: it is inherently decentralized and thus any attack on the system will only affect one airport at the time. One could implement a remote backup and have that redundancy in case something happens to the tower. And as you say all the technology can be integrated into the local tower, while also maintaining the visual line to the aircraft and airport
What happens if the one conventional / physical tower is not available? There is normally only one tower at the airports and then you loose everything! With a remote tower you can have several remote rooms available, that concept of geographical redundancy is used for decades in other safety critical environments.
The main concern I have is that the system is based on satellite comms and data transfer. Lately, there has been evidence of bad actors threatening satellites used for comms, dada and GPS. We would have to run dark fiber nets to obviate the satellite threat.
@@arr64lima63 there is not satellite communication involved, it is based on ground based infrastrure (fiber cables, radio transmission)
I remember a study on meteorology offices that was trying to identify which meteorological instruments were most important in creating an accurate forecast.
There was one feature that stood out as being far more strongly correlated with more accurate forecasts than any other - a window.
My biggest concern that one you briefly touched on but I think needs more investigation is the reliability of these systems. Not having someone with actual eyes in the sky means if there is some sort of a disruption in the data feed or a camera glitch/break, you have little to no backup system. I visited a control tower in Canada twice, they had a radar screen and other fancy things, but they still have their backup battery powered radio, light gun, binoculars, and other stand alone things that could keep the airport running smoothly in the event of an issue. At a smaller airport this wouldn't be as big of an issue, the pilots would just have to treat it as an uncontrolled airport, but in larger centers, it could prove to be devastating.
-just my two cents!
Also the data security. Imagine this being hacked.
Ultimately, I think question is not if something fails, I mean there's bound to be errors and faults at some point, but you can account for that. But would this system make airports overall more safe. If this system is much safer when it's working, even if for some reason it fails, it can still totally be worth it since it's overall impact is positive. And you would obviously try to build as much redundancy as you can.
That's beside the practical benefits for actual operator doing the job and business side of things.
On bigger airports, you could just have the operators in office inside the airport and run cables from cameras straight to there. Making things even more reliable, and you would also have them hooked to internet too via both cable and mobile so if they need help at any time, someone could help remotely.
I can definitely see remote towers being used to augment existing towers to address line-of-sight issues like blind spots. LAX already has a smaller, secondary control tower to manage traffic around satellite terminals; I could see the benefit of taller, thinner camera towers scattered around the airport to provide good visual coverage of the entire complex.
As a lay person, I found this video to be one of the most interesting that you have done. Systems stuff is always interesting. One thing you didn't cover was how rapid response maintenance would be done in the event of a major failure. The logistics around inventory holding, having the right engineers in the right places at all the right times with all the right site knowledge sounds like a scheduling nightmare all of its own!
I was also just thinking that the infra-red technology alone would go a long way to prevent a future Tenerife or Linate incident.
Thank you for the nice words! I'm sure the switch to these towers will still require people on site for maintenance reasons.
@@MentourNow I wonder could be possible to triple train the local maintenance/ ground control personnel to take up some amount of air control for the period, aside from the usual automated response of the pilots to comms themselves to wait… surely it being a remote setup it will take longer to re-establish connection to main hub…
Well, without working in this industry, i know something that's sure (or, at least, should be):
Every critical infrastructures does have redundancy equipments in backup, some really ready to step on in a Wink (take the Mona Lisa as an exemple, behind the wall that hold this work of art, there's three identic separate electric cabinets that can kick on if one of them failed to maintain the temperature inside...)
There's also scheduled maintenance, that should act as a safety measures (i know there's a plant that make soup and sauces few miles away from my home, they do annual scheduled maintenance for all of their machines...)
@@clementclarisseclemen3d708 to me the weak link are the monitors. If the Mona Lisa gets cold feet, nobody dies. Have a screen go bad, communications cable get cut by accident or otherwise, well there goes the signal at a critical time. Eyes may get fatigued but they don't suddenly go out. To me, this is like driverless cars. There are just way to many variables and things that can go wrong, programming glitches, software updates that fail a year after it's been uploaded, hackers that get into the system. Like the driverless cars, all it takes is some fantastic failures, lots of people die and this will become not such a good idea.
The airport would still have a multitude of communication, navigation and surveillance equipment, so there would still be a CNS department on site (at least for everything bigger than a small airport in the middle of nowhere that maybe sees 2 planes a day). So probably not many if any changes would need to be made on that front. :)
At 4:55, he refers to the second ATC tower located at KLIA Terminal 2. The one you're seeing in the video is the first ATC tower located at KLIA Terminal 1, completed in 1998.
Great catch! Thank you
I'm glad you touched on communication redundancy, as that could be a potentially serious issue. Additionally, if the number of controllers is reduced, and controllers are juggling multiple airports, each with different conditions and needs, would this raise the likelihood of a confusion and human error at a critical moment?
If in doubt, TOGA
Yes
I can see the controllers being saturated if they are handling multiple small airports, but in that case I think you should compare the risk of that to the risk of an untowered airport, and I think the task saturation from time to time can be still safer than uncontrolled operations all the time.
@@kukuc96 An untowered airport, especially one that pilots are lead to believe is towered, is definitely a risk. My main point is that that specific risk, of leaving an airport unmonitored, can be guarded against more easily than the risk of a controller confusing Airport A, which has snow and low visibility, with Airport B, which has high winds, and Airport C, which has nearby mountains, while trying to switch between the three rapidly. And given how much employers like to save money by minimizing the number of employees, I could easily see them assigning too many simultaneous airports to one controller.
At least until the first few crashes led to revisions in safety standards.
As someone who works in IT, I have witnessed some truly bizarre outages. What they had in common was that they managed to bring even global businesses to a standstill until someone on site pulled the right cable to trigger the failover that was supposed to kick in the second the problem occurred. While the chances of this happening to any given network are incredibly small, the fact that it can happen somewhere is a given.
Translated to airports, this means you need a plan for backup operations if the remote control centre is lost. Having ATC in a building at every major airport and being able to walk to a physical emergency tower nice, small airport with a plan to divert all aircraft to the next major one if it goes down is also possible. But what happens if the big airport has ATC from hours away and goes dark? The question is not if, but when it happens with loss of life. Most people take working IT with functioning failover as a given and ignore the fact that it is not a given. Even if 60-300 seconds outage is not much downtime at the time of a traffic conflict on the runway, it can have some interesting results.
Good luck, I take the train.
Second thing that's often neglected after documentation is periodic testing, if redundancys work as expected (including switching back to normal operation)...
@@johnrodriguez5317 Oof, good point, and even that can be diluted to the point of uselessness.
Have you ever done a disaster recovery test by sending shutdown commands to one server at a time? A real network outage a few years later proved that test was BS.
Most other customers never bothered to test anything, as it would be costly and affect availability. You can imagine the outcome for them in the same network outage.
If you want a solid failover system, run hard tests at least once a month with any scenario someone can think of, and then you know you have a chance of surviving the real one.
There is more and more experience with remote controls, for example drones. The controllers work safely even from thousands of kilometers away, as long as they can perceive everything that is important. Since technical sensors are better than our eyes, this will prevail.
By the way, teams at the big speed sailboat race in LA last year were also controlled from somewhere else. T.w. from Europe. Nothing other than ground control at space companies that haven't worked with a window view for a long time. Many other data are far more important.
Modern air defense systems can even manage many more processes independently. People are far too slow for so many multiple operations. And that has already proven itself very well.
I worry about hacking attempts. Some of the devices needed for this type of operation necessarily need to be connected to the Internet. You can't make a device that can't be hacked, and while you can make a system secure and almost unbreakable, with large scale systems it's easy to let entry points unnoticed and sometimes people setting these systems don't always take the necessary steps to make them fully secure.
I don't think hacking will be a common problem, far from it, but with continuos geopolitical tensions and problems and with cyberwarfare already being a thing, I worry it could happen to disturb relief and rescue missions during wars
27 years in ATC Towers then took the early retirement.
We all discussed this amongst the controllers and the majority were in favour of remote towers if the equipment was dependable and provided full coverage of the airport.
Camera lenses can be fogged up during inclement weather unless located indoors. Tower windows have heated or air conditioned moving air to keep them from fogging.
I disliked having to use binoculars which were used many times during a shift. When binoculars were required the controller had to stand to see over other controllers heads that were sitting and standing. Difficulty trying to manipulate the binoculars focus and zoom with both hands and trying to press the mic transmit button at the same time. A designated camera that could be operated by a seated controller that has a joystick to maneuver the cameras direction and zoom in to a location that required attention would be preferable.
Humans are reluctant with change. Over another generation of those now entering aviation will probably encourage this change to remote.
My fear is power outages, software glitches, hardware malfunctions, and the enabling of overburdening controllers further. Hybrid sounds the best, to me. Even far into the future, I'll never be convinced full remote is the best option.
Aircraft controllers have one of the highest unaliving rates inthe world, because airports keep putting further burdens on them. I don't believe remote will fix that, it's simply be an excuse to burden them further.
You are correct. Hybrid is the away to go.Thats why I drive a Prius@@ghostratsarah
@@ghostratsarahpower outages risk doesn't bother me. We have backup generators. We have battery backups. We use them everyday for rail, telecom, police/fire, hospitals, etc.
It's fundamentally an issue that can be safeguarded with sufficient design and protocol.
The overburdened controllers is the biggest thing for me. It needs policy change, which isn't as simple to implement as a rigorous design spec.
Yeah next step after installing cameras is letting AI take over the controllers job.
"if the equipment was dependable" "If" is a small word but I heard once that very large things often move on very small hinges. Anything made by humans is prone to failure. Some have said redundancy. How do you switch out a huge monitor on the fly, when that screen covers a critical part of the full picture?
As a network engineer for a company that has a significant amount of branches across the US, I can tell you that achieving triple redundant links with 10-15 ms latency each is near impossible for most locations. Even connection speeds that are constantly under 150 ms latency and under 30 ms jitter (which is the recommended latency requirements for audio conversations) are hard to get over lengthy distances like they have in the example of Sundsvall control center unless you go with dedicated links.
But having 3 redundant dedicated links is hard to achieve. First of all, redundant data links inherently require at least 2 providers and preferably 3 providers. Each link has to be both physically and logically separate from each other until it reaches each end (airport network edge and control center network edge). This includes items like all different man holes where the cabling runs through, ISP's that don't integrate their dedicated links with each other or a wide area outage with 1 ISP could bring down 2 or even 3 links, etc...
Most areas do not offer these kind of diversification requirements, and asking a data provider to do this just for your company is often not worth it for the ISP, as they would just loose a lot of money over it.
However if the airport/government throws enough money at it, they can have dedicated lines ran and take the full cost upon themselves, but we are talking about 10+ millions for 75 miles times 3.
Redundancy doesn't have to be hardwired though... the likes of SpaceX's Starlink is taking up space in these commercial sectors.
Starlink even as a low orbit sat would not be a great option as weather can have significant impact on it.
Even without the network considerations, you have latency between the camera lenses and the video encoders in the cameras as well as latency between the video decoders and the displays on the other end. If the displays are running at 60Hz, you're basically going to have at least 15ms of latency hardwired into the system just between them and the decoders.
I think that overall the video portion would be ok with a bit more delay as long as the total does not exceed 2-3 seconds. For audio, especially communication between tower and pilots, it is crucial that the message does not get fragmented due to latency and jitter, which easily happens if you stray outside of the above mentioned requirements.
@@belgianalex Indeed, the reaction time of ATC doesn't need to be in the sub-1-second range as they don't remote-control the planes---the delay due to them needing to speak to the pilots already is huge. For voice comms, there are nifty solutions that can hide even extreme jitter. Here it really helps that the communications are not a steady stream but bursts. The system can easily buffer those and even step back, wait and restart if there's a collision detected. That way, the delay becomes a feature.
This is already a thing in the railway market. In Europe, especially in Italy, most railway stations (except big ones) are unmanned, and remotely managed by the equivalent of an ACC (in this case, they're called Central Control Rooms - in Italian Sale Operative Centrali). They remotely manage railway stations and traffic control systems (signalling, switches, power lines), using fiber optic based critical communication systems with lots of redundancy. The Italian railway developed a system called "ACC (yes funny) - Apparato Centrale Computerizzato" (Central Computerized Apparatus), which essentially replaces the stationmaster. Every big region has a dedicated DCO (DirigenteCentrale Operativo) which is responsible of centralized traffic control, separation and safe operation of the lines.
Railway signalling can work really differently depending on country, but this sort of thing has really been done since at least the 1960s - possibly even earlier since the 1930s. The first signalling systems that could be considered safe by modern standards was in Britain called "absolute block", and usually involved using a combination of technology and careful procedure to ensure that only one train could be on a track between two stations at one time; then at the stations themselves (within "station limits"), signallers having a good view of the lines authorising train movements using their sight to ensure the intended movement was clear of other trains. In the UK these "stations" from a signalling perspective are decoupled from the idea of passenger stations and are thus known as block posts, but in many other countries they still call them their equivalent of "station". At stations where a stop signal was located in a place obscured from the view of the signalbox, a rule in the UK was implemented to ensure that trains stopped at this signal must send a member of traincrew up to the signalbox to ensure they were aware of the train's presence. In the early 20th century this was supplemented or replaced with the idea of having a telephone at each such signal to allow the signalbox to be contacted remotely.
As for sending trains between stations, this was done with a relatively simple telegraph system (called a "block instrument") between two signalboxes, along with a pair of bells for communication. Basically the box sending the train would ask the receiving box if it could accept it, and upon receiving the affirmative, the receiving box would set its instrument to indicate a train could be sent, and the sending box would signal the train on. Once the train left the control area of the sending box, another signal would be sent, and the receiving box would set its instrument to indicate that a train was on the line. This way if the sending box wishes to send another train, signallers in both boxes would have an opportunity to notice that the instrument is set to "train on line", and so would not send another. Indeed this was later interlocked electrically with the signals themselves, so that the signal could not be given for a train to proceed unless the instrument were set to "line clear" (that is, immediately after acceptance). Finally once the train arrived at the receiving box, the instrument would be set back to the neutral normal position.
Around the same time as the invention of the telephone, the "track circuit" was also invented. This is really the invention that revolutionised railway signalling. The idea is that you divide the railway up into physical blocks, with the rails in each block electrically insulated from the rails in adjacent blocks (this can be done using a long diagonal joint between two rails with an insulating material in between). Within each block, you then connect the two rails to either side of a power source. Finally between the two rails, you connect a large resistor in series with a relay. Thus when no train is present, the current will pass through the resistor and energise the relay, thus actively detecting the absence of a train. When a train enters the section, the electricity will be short-circuited via the wheels and axles of the train, which will form a much lower resistance path and thus redirect the current from the relay; the relay will be deenergised and indicate the presence of a train. If the power is lost, the relay damaged, or the rail cleanly broken, the relay will lose power and will thus indicate the presence of a train; therefore this system is largely failsafe.
Now with track circuits, there is no more need for this telephone rule, and in general you can get away with having signalboxes with many more signals not visible from the box, since the track circuits will be indicated on a diagram. Before too long the track circuits graduated from being an optional aid to being something interlocked with the signalling itself, thus preventing signals from being cleared when a train was stood at the track circuit in front. But there was still a practical limitation to signalboxes' control areas, as points (switches in American English) had a limited range where mechanical control was possible - in Britain we used point bars so this was very limited, but in much of Europe they used wire-controlled points so this range was slightly increased, but nevertheless still limited practically to the area immediately around a railway station. However, from the 1930s advances in various technologies allowed electropneumatically controlled points and signals to be introduced. The London Underground was a notable early user of this technology, and in fact some lines still use electromagnetic points and train protection devices to this day! But between track circuits and electropneumatics, you could now have a much longer practical range for your control; though now you needed a pneumatic mains supply along your railway so this was still practically limited to more suburban railways. But placing these boxes together you also no longer needed the block instruments to pass trains between boxes - you could instead just install continuous strings of track circuits and some clever interlocking logic between the two boxes to seamlessly pass trains from one box to another without the signallers having to follow any particular procedure. This new type of signalling is, in the UK, called "track circuit block" (TCB).
From the 1960s though, widespread electricity combined with better technology to control motors and suchlike led to fully electrical points and signals, thus leading to the era of the Power Signalbox (PSB). These could control practically unlimited areas, limited only really to how large a control panel you wanted to build. In Britain at this point the old idea of stations with signallers expecting to see most operations occurring was now very much gone - and it really wasn't needed, since signalling was only ever intended to protect trains against other train movements and (as an afterthought, almost) level crossings. Both of these could now be handled remotely (level crossings with CCTV or automatically triggered half-barriers), From the 60s we were now very much going from "signallers looking out of the window to see where trains could move" to "signallers pressing buttons on a control panel while looking at illuminated lights to signal trains".
Nowadays there are only really two major differences to what I've described above. One is that we've graduated from control panels to computer workstations. This allows much larger areas to be controlled from similarly-sized buildings. The other is that some countries are now more likely to use axle counters over track circuits (basically computer-based devices that very reliably count numbers of axles passing the boundaries of a block), as this avoids the maintenance burden of an insulated block joint (other countries continue to swear by track circuits - mostly countries like the US that refuse to maintain their railways properly as they falsely believe that they can get away with not bothering to inspect rails if they can rely on track circuits to detect broken rails, some of the time anyway when the breaks are clean). But as a result of all this, in the UK at least railway signalling has not been a local affair in most locations for quite some time now. There are of course still exceptions, where low usage or just unfortunate bad luck has led to certain sections of line never being upgraded from the classic boxes (very notably, Absolute Block with five individual signalboxes, albeit with modern electric signals, track circuits, and interlocking, is still used on a short section of the mainline between London and Manchester!)
@@Muzer0 yes exactly. But the one I described is a little “evolution” of the concept. It is more of an “integrated” system, which allows a more comprehensive monitoring and management of all the lines. But in a nutshell, yes, it’s been done for years.
This system completely gets rid of the stationmaster in minor stations, as most of the operations are carried out by semi-automated systems
The same is true for the Indian Railways with centralised control centres.
From my experience though of centralised control on UK railways though, when it fails, it fails spectacularly. No longer do you just have a small area that can potentially be returned to hand signalling and pilotman operations, but vast areas that are effectively shut down.
I have witnessed power failures in a uk signalling centre (caused by an outside force) that disabled an entire city’s rail network along with its feeder lines for 50 miles in all directions. It was a single point failure that has hopefully been eliminated (above my pay grade, I’m merely response, not design), but showed the flaws in the rush to centralised control.
Now, at no point was any danger introduced, as the ground equipment, when disconnected from the signalling centre will fail “right side” - meaning bringing everything to stop in controlled signalling areas - or at worst “protected wrong side” - meaning the train may pass the signal that has returned to danger but the protection equipment intervened to stop it as designed, but the costs of disruption must have wiped out a great deal of the savings.
@@badbob1982 here in Italy stations are configured to allow manual control from the operator’s desk in the station control room. There’s still a possibility of delayed or reduced service, but controllers can man the stations and pick up the slack fairly quickly. As in the case of power failures, well… no trains will be running as 95% of the Italian railway infrastructure is electrified 😂
I would think it's helpful to have cameras spread around, so that during bad weather the controller can have eyes on the the runways directly.
I think the entire airfield needs to be on camera regardless of where controllers are. Look at the recent collision in Japan where the only footage came from a security camera on the side of a building far from the runway.
It would make sense to have all runway hold points covered by a camera I would have thought?
@@PsRohrbaugh You're talking about GC. The real development's Approach/Departure, LHR's has been off-site since the early 70s, gradually developing until almost all was off-site. It's now moved far away.
What happens when the glass on the camera gets wet and blurred?
@@suzanneterrey4499 Similar to shipping spin-screens, the cover glass rotates so water centrifuges off. Other more advanced methods are also used.
I’m a controller at Chicago O’Hare. We would absolutely benefit from this technology even if just to supplement what we already have. The airport is simply too big to see the far corners of it with any detail out the window, for example if a plane’s nose is over the hold line or not.
We also have 3 control towers because the far north and south runways can’t be clearly seen from the center tower due to distance and obstructions like hangars. So we have to staff a tower at each end just to control those runways, which aren’t even always in use. This would be a perfect fit for a remote setup that can be worked from the center tower building.
Yeah from the main tower building, but would you like it if they situated the control towers 200 miles away instead?
@@rl7012 I’ll admit it would make me uneasy at first. I value being able to see the planes with my own eyes. That being said, assuming the camera coverage is greater than or equal to the view from the tower, plus the addition of information overlays and additional sensors and warnings, etc., it may very well be a safer operation.
Working ground control at a busy/complex place like ORD is where the idea might fall apart. When the visibility is nil and we have to rely on ground radar and pilot reports things slow way down. Simpler airport layouts with less traffic though, I would work it remote and be fine with it after the learning curve.
@@tivey87 You have to take that view though as your job depends on it. You know which way the wind is blowing so you are taking the path of least resistance.
ATC is highly underrated and in my opinion there are much more significant changes required relating to human factors and capacity management that's often swept under the carpet or with little attention to issues when it comes to ATC.
I was initially worried about the limitations of this system in winter ops, but knowing that it's in use in Örnsköldsvik makes me feel like it's definitely up for the task. 😅
Also, I assume the security on the components, their software, and the networks are absolutely top notch, otherwise it would be an easy target in an act of war/terrorism.
I assume someone is already trying to break into it.
Would you like to play air traffic controller?
I would think bad weather is a great argument *for* remote control towers. Controllers often can’t see much of the airport in bad weather. But if there’s cameras spread all over the place they could still have some good awareness of what’s going on.
@@benoithudson7235
They should have cameras even if they're not working remote.
Sounds like a good idea for current towers.
Cameras could track planes and watch for runway incursions.
From an IT Security standpoint, of course there are "top notch" or "state of the art" firewalls, VPN technologies etc. that will be in place here. But if I had to design it without cost in mind and just looking at IT Security - lay a 300Km fibreglass cable from point to point to send the data through instead of sending it through the internet or an MPLS network ;)
But no matter how you do it, you're absolutely right that it's going to be a factor that makes it more vulnerable from that point of view.
You're making a lot of assumptions 😂. There is really no reason not to maintain a human eye in the sky even if this system is enabled.
I believe remote control towers have some advantages that you mentioned. As a project manager who installs similar systems, the biggest concern I have is to ensure a continuous power supply to all systems (power and video) along with back-up systems, 24/7 under any circumstance, including weather interruptions. It seems to me that as these systems mature over time that a hybrid system would be more practical to meet unforeseen interruptions of visual control.
Also, what about data security?
@@EvoraGT430 you just gave me a new paranoia.
My first thoughts, too. At least with visual, a power outtage can be combatted with binoculars- in an absolute emergency where a divert is impossible. But remote? Well, time for the pilots to prove they're either superheroes or normal humans with limitations.
Good overview. I would nuance the description of tower control however. It's not so much about being able to see aircraft taxiing, but being able to see the maneuvering area to visually detect anything that doesn't belong there or for conformance with instructions. I was at Airspace World in Geneva last year and got see about 6 remote tower offerings. The one from Saab was certainly one of the most interesting examples. For larger airport I think we'll need to wait for VR. Sensor integration for detecting things like drones, wildlife, birds and other obstacles is also interesting and necessary to replace the loss of visual acuity of video display screens compared to the human eyeball. It also needs to integrate ASDE radars while the camera systems must resist challenging weather occurrences like snow storms, freezing rain and others. Something the Saab product has become really good at.
I'm presuming the remote towers have some capability to deliver light gun signal then as well?
I dont remember which one.
But I'm like, 95% sure there's a regulation for that. Yes.
Yes
The idea of many control towers for large airports makes sense. There could even be very short control towers at the ends of each runway so the controllers can keep a close eye on what's happening on each runway. E.g. the Japan airport accident might have been avoided if the controllers could see the smaller aircraft had moved out onto the runway before being cleared.
It might have prevented the Tenerife disaster.
@@GaryCameron Idk if that would've helped at Tenerife, since a tower at the downwind end of the runway wouldn't have seen the Pan Am aircraft taxiing any better. *Possibly* if the controller at that end was listening more closely to the comms than the KLM pilots were, he/she could have alerted the Flying Dutchman as they spooled up their engines; but there would be no visual advantage to a tower there in that fog. A tower at the opposite end (upwind at the time) may have helped, but again everyone was relying on radio communication because nobody involved could see more than one very small area of the airport.
@@327Erich if the airport is that heavily traffic, the cameras and related system should only be installed to help and aid in reduction of task...
I heard they assigned a guy who's only role is to track the planes as a knee-jerk reaction to the Tokyo incident.
I loved the remote tower at KJYO. It was sorely needed for such a busy GA airport tucked under both the Washington DC SFRA and the the KIAD class bravo airspace. Building a brick and morter tower would have cost millions and taken many years. It was great, and then the FAA killed it.
Really?! Well, hopefully it comes back.
I'm a pilot based at KJYO (Leesburg, Virginia, USA), and we had a wonderfully-working remote tower operation (based on Saab-Sensis technology) for about 5 years before the FAA sadly forced it to shut down last year. KJYO is busier than 90% of US towered airports, is located underneath the Washington Dulles (KIAD) 1500 foot Bravo shelf, and is located on the edge of the DC Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA) for security. We're now stuck using a temporary "horse trailer" cab tower with much worse visibility than the remote tower, with hope that we'll be able to get a replacement "brick and mortar" tower funded in about 6 years! The FAA shut our remote tower down because it changed the rules for certification, requiring each supplier to build a new testbed at the FAA tech center in Atlantic City, NJ. Saab Sensis refused to go along with this, since our KJYO remote tower operation used older generation technology.@@MentourNow
Did anyone watch the new Mission Impossible? Hope they thought about security very well.
@sncy5303 of course, they had 5 years of actual use data in every sort of weather and conditions, after a 2 year test period, as opposed to just testing at the FAA facility. Doing it the FAA way would have made it cost prohibitive for the vendor. This is a case of petty dictators at the FAA refusing to be flexible or innovative in favor of showing up to the party 5 years late and demanding that everybody do things their way instead. Result? KJYO is LESS safe. Thanks, federal government!
There was no requirement to test the system in Atlantic City more than 5 years ago when the KJYO remote tower was first installed. The FAA has since changed the certification requirements.@@sncy5303
0:34 FFS. Watching this while ending my shift at work and listening to the Teams/Skype ringtone triggered my PTSD
I am glad you mentioned the Triple Route redundancy and robust uninteruptable power supplies UPS's. I used to work in a Satellite Earth Station (no longer exists), only a short distance from London City Airport and many of our feeds were linked to other sites and customers by duplex terrestrial routes. We also had UPS's and backup generators. I can remember a short loss of both terrestrial data routes and once a partial loss of site power and services for over an hour. You have to remember Murphy's law. What can go wrong will go wrong and it will go wrong at the most awkward time. You plan for the worst and hope for the best. These outages were over a long period of years proving the redundancy worked for the most part and our services were data and TV. No lives involved. As long as the radio comms are seperate feeds to the ATC data to allow for that once in a lifetime failure during a poor weather landing under remote guidance, this should never be a worry. 🤔
Was going to say, would be a great idea to add thermal cameras to this for fog/low light/weather conditions and to help track things like birds and drones… then at the 21 min mark looked like a controller switched to one, so I guess that’s already been done! Pretty cool.
Though hope they are setting up multiple locations for them instead of just all in one city. Thinking of things like earthquakes and fires that could cause the controllers to need to evacuate. Bad when it happens at one airport, worse when it happens to all of them for a few hundred KMs all at once!
What about the psychological factor? While not an inherit limitation, all the control rooms you shown don't have windows. Working long shifts in a windowless room can be very taxing.
The monitors are the window in this case and actual windows can only serve as a distraction. Controllers also don't work an 8h shift without taking breaks, no they have frequent breaks and when they take their breaks, they can go look out the window.
TRACONS dont have windows either and theyve been around for decades
@@Hans-gb4mv Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Do you just close the tower so the controller can take a break to relieve eye strain? It would require extra staffing to allow break to be taken. In a multi position tower that wouldn't be an issue, but in a lot of the smaller aerodromes currently proposing digital control they are currently solo watch, meaning you have to double up on the number of controllers required.
One thing in favor of remote towers is that you would have a record of *everything* that happened at the airport so in case of accidents you'll have 8K video of everything leading up to and including the accident, instead of 240p grainy security camera videos. That would make analyzing what went wrong a lot easier.
I plead for redundancy, like in the airplane itself, also have redundancy built in with air traffic controlroom. So i would go for the scenario where although there are a bazilliion cameras mounted in the skies, that there are still people comparing and physically seeing out over the runway. It should also never be a choise only to cheapen out on stuff.
Technology is great, but also frequently breaks down! As a tech guy by trade I can tell you the biggest issue here will be continuous power supplies. Redundant power systems often fail, start late, or don’t kick in at all. Once power is lost, how will that remote worker connect with the system?! This also applies to the worker. As we know blackouts in our homes happen from time to time. Internet service in your home is not as stable as the business version. So the worker could lose internet service as well. So many variables to cause failure here. This will surely cause many more delays or cancellations. I pray it doesn’t cause any accidents🙏🏾
KFNL (Northern Colorado) had a remote tower project - officially paused but they're on site using trailers and a virtual tower. Fairly interesting because it's technically class E airspace but treated like a class D due to a NOTAM designating control tower hours.
8:59 Wow! I was already surprised that such a big CZcamsr that I watch so much grew up in the same small Swedish town as me.
Even more so that Örnsköldsvik Airport was the first in the world to implement this.
Glad you mentioned London City. I always feel like I'm landing on an aircraft carrier when flying from City. I used to love flying in on the BAE 146's - they used to 'dive' into the airport when coming in over Canary Wharf. It's one of only a few airports where you really experience the descent angle.
Railway signalling in the UK is doing the same thing. It used to be a signal box at every station or junctions (and multiple at large stations), then in the 60s it started to move to one signal box per major station, and now they are combining these signal boxes into Regional Operation Centers (ROCs), and signallers are trained on multiple areas at once from one location. And in the event of a major incident, the supervisors and help the signallers working by taking over sections of the area while the signaller works on the issue
IT Architect by profession. Lesson 1: the network is not reliable. OK, you can set up multiple network routes between the remote tower and the controller, but this can still fail. So I would be looking at what the fallback position is when an airport without local controllers loses connectivity with the remote controllers. There are a bunch of technical reasons why this could happen but it is a thing that can happen
I work in international television distribution, now almost exclusively over IP.
I agree and see this often, having 2 (or more) completely diverse routes doesn't mean they can't go down at the same time. What can suddenly go wrong in one data centre can easily happen in another...
The biggest problem with remote towers is finding alternate airports in northern Sweden at night. Since the only H24 airport connects to the same RTC as most other airports. So either the alternate has to be Arlanda or you have to open up a non RTC airport as an alternate. So in other words a big waste of fuel and money.
You don’t think the biggest problem is hostile states hacking the software and downing aircraft?
The mention of Formula 1 in a Mentour video is perfection 🤭🤭
Another great video!
For context, I work in - among other things - CCTV camera installation.
I think exclusively remote towers could be quite dangerous for aircraft. Cameras develop faults or just straight up fail unexpectedly. Power outages would obviously cause more issues at an airport than just the cameras going offline, but that's something that would have to be considered as well.
I agree using cameras have countless advantages, but I really think there still needs to be at least one human in a tower at the airport itself incase of failure. At least until the technology proves itself over a span of at least a few years.
I feel like a hybrid model might be better overall, things like combined information at remote towers sounds great for *all* kinds whether they are in a real tower or not. I'd hope that maybe at least remote towers would be on the premises too personally, to help give the controllers better context to the weather and such. I know that doesn't help with the ATC shortage
But I also feel I am probably extremely biased here, I'm not particularly old (37), and have grown up immersed in technology, but I feel like the tactile experience is really important for some things, though this probably varies from person to person. I tend to like to be able to use both physical media and digital media based on my needs rather than relying on one or the other.
I’m surprised he didn’t bring up the recent runway collision in Japan. Which happened at night.
The realization that the CG Dash was on the runway for 40-45 seconds wasn’t known. And one if the reasons that it went ‘unseen’ is that from the tower it was barely visible, perhaps completely indistinguishable due to night and the congested array of lights from all kinds of things. So cameras, night vision IR cameras, monitored by automated systems and controllers may’ve had a better overall airport situational awareness.
Good point!
@@MentourNow
I was sure that’s where you were going with camera assisted ground movement monitoring.
That already exists though, and Haneda airport has ground radar tracking of planes so I'm not sure where the breakdown must have occurred.
Once, I worked with a chef who said in catering college they were trained to be able to carry on cooking in the event of a power cut. (Imagine a hotel of 300 guests with a wedding and a conference... They'll still want feeding!) This was hugely inspirational to me, and I've always taken the attitude that I should be able to do whatever I do in the event of a power cut. This has actually been super handy in a variety of situations - so here I wonder - what would they do if they lost electricity to their remote location?
There have been a couple of times in Petter's stories where colleagues of a stressed handler have seen the stress build and been able to intervene. How could that happen?
I like the idea of being able to 'see' the ground situation regardless of fog, but there may be a data transmission lag. As Petter has described many times, situations happen within seconds, so every millisecond is critical.
Psych studies from decades ago show that as people become more detached / distant from others, they becomes less concerned. Psychologically, looking at aluminum tubes on a monitor at an airport miles away is moving in the wrong direction.
Great video Petter! I took a tour of the Federal Aviation Administration’s CAMI Institute with my university flight club last fall. They have a lab dedicated to studying air traffic control and brought up similar points. Something I found interesting about the difference between real control towers and virtual ones is depth perception. They mentioned that a controller in a real tower has the freedom to move around the tower because an aircraft will always be the same distance relative to a controller. For example, an aircraft 5 NM away on final will always appear a certain size on the tower window because even if the controller takes a few steps away, the aircraft is still 5 NM physically from them. Those few feet are negligible. The issue arises when you try the same thing in a virtual tower. Sure, there is a fixed spot where an aircraft will appear at 5 NM. However, one step away can make the aircraft appear a different distance away because of the resolution and calibration of the screen. I’m a pilot and not a computer technician so I have no idea how they can fix this issue, although I’m sure it can be done.
Sammy
Multiple-angle overlayed camera images might work, although that would be a pain to properly configure. Maybe in the future something with Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality could work, but for now I wouldn't use it yet because the technology hasn't matured enough for such a critical function.
you have to weigh the many advantages of virtual control towers, against the odd disadvantage. if the FAA aren't prepared to make a balanced judgement, then they are cutting off their nose ...
This is a problem not with the sensors but with the fact that we have to use glass as a lens to focus the light and it just behaves differently than our eyes do. So you are kind of stuck with one range of focus and one range of dynamic contrast. Maybe if there was some other material they could use that worked better? MIT is working on a new metalens material that just might do this. But ground glass or worse yet, plastic, severely limits the technology versus a human eye.
This has been done on the network of small airports in Northern and Western Norway for quite some years. A lot of controllers are sitting in centers in Røyken (near Oslo) and Bodø, remotely performing ATC tasks for these small airports which are mainly serving light aircraft such as the Dash-8.
I got to tour the remote ramp control at MCI in the US! It was very cool! The different views on the camera and zooms seemed really slick. Their only complaint was that if the internet quits, they're pretty screwed, and would have to walk across the apron (or, er, under it) to the old ramp tower (which was still there and still operational as a backup). So they were still on site, just in an underground room. Which seemed like a good compromise.
There are several secondary, but possibly lifesaving advantages to the added surveillance capablity of a remote tower setup. Fire crews could be given live feeds as they approach an incident area, this could help with evaluating how to approach an incident, what special equipment might be needed, where secondary wreckage might be, etc. Snow removal needs and progress could be closely monitored. Cameras on rescue and maintainance vehicles could also provide video support back to the remote tower, helping keep controllers informed in real time. It would also be helpful for airport security purposes, IR sensors could sense both people and larger animals in unexpected locations. At some point it might even be possible and helpful to provide bidirectional video information between aircraft and controllers, especially when there is a need to share complex information in real time. And finally, it would be of great help in mishap analysis. As always, thank you for this informative video!
In a way NASA and other space agencies monitoring space craft remotely was probably one of the first ways of doing near real time remote work in a way that resembles our modern one.
4:00 Thanks for showing off Schiphol!
You are more than welcome!
I think it is a great development for the aviation. Although I had some doubts when I heard they are planning to install a remote tower here at "my" local airport Maastricht Aachen "Beek" EHBK in the south east of the Netherlands. I am not sure when they will install it. But I know that there is already a remote tower operational at Groningen Airport Eelde EHGG in the north of hte Netherlands, the controllers are located at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Eventually this will be the overal solution I guess. You forgot to mention 1 thing: the vhf radio's must also be remotely operated. So the transceivers are located at the airport and the sending and receiving audio goes via lines to the remote control center, including the ptt (push to talk) control.
Just wanted to say I love your content and watch the videos each Saturday. My partner is currently in the air (returning from Russia via Istanbul and Warsaw) and I really didn’t think I wanted to watch an air crash investigation video😮. Here you are with a great video on two of my fav topics, technology and remote work! Excellent video and I got my Saturday afternoon fix in!
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
My greatest concern is to keep all this technology running without a hitch when I regularly hear in incident investigations current systems being out of order like ground radar, runway incursion system etc. Virtual tower systems add a huge pile on top of an already long list of complex operation-critical systems that are supposed to make things safer.
Even worse is now we have software that constantly needs to call home to a server to validate its licenses since we went from purchasing software to renting it.. I will *never* fly to any airport that has this if they allow this network to touch the internet.. ANYTHING can be exploited by a persistent enough and sophisticated attacker and unfortunately there are more and more of those popping up every day..
Croydon Control tower is now a museum. The other contribution Croydon made to Aviation? They came up with a specific voice radio code. MAYDAY!!
I'm 62 now, and I've only had the chance to fly commercial on one round trip from Indianapolis International to Phoenix Sky Harbor with a stop and plane change in St. Louis, and the same return trip. This was back in the late mid-90s with Southwest. I was very nervous about the trip but was quite impressed with the flight to Phoenix!
When it came to our return home, our flight was postponed several times and then canceled due to "The first time in nearly 20 years," as we were told at the time. Eventually, our flight was combined with another one headed for a stop in St. Louis. This flight was scheduled to leave nearly 12 hours after our initial flight.
When we boarded our 737-400, we discovered that every single seat on that bird was full. There was still a significant level of fog, and this flight was delayed for 45 minutes also. My confidence that my wife and I were going to get to see our families again was quickly dropping! When it came time to rotate, the Captain told us it MIGHT be a little bumpy. A LITTLE?!?!? 😬😵💫
Anyway, we all survived and had a real good idea what a rodeo bull rider feels like! I had to swallow really hard several times, but I didn't "blow chunks"🤢🤮, which actually made me feel just a little bit stronger... LOL
All of this said my hat was off to the crew on the flight deck and in the cabin for making that a trip that I will fondly remember for the rest of my life! I wouldn't have much more than a second thought about doing it all over again! I'm not so sure about getting my sweet wife to join me, though... LOL
It's interesting looking at that 1920s map. We lived under the 2 mile marker for Biggin Hill EGKB 21, by the first railway station from the major junction marked, so it's clear they were still using the railways to navigate by!
As a tower controller at a major airport, I have been on board with this type of system architecture for quite sometime. At least, I’ve been open to the concept and have begun to see the benefits and the tie-in to top level requirements of the system.
Which brings me to the underpinning critical factor: the current human-centric system is unable to sustain operations as the stakeholders envision.
Additionally, factoring in direct controller-pilot communications being implicated in so many scenarios, there is a real reality that air traffic controllers will evolve into systems managers departing from the current interface we as pilots and controllers are used to.
Evolution is coming whether we like it or not - liking it is not a system requirement. At the end of the day, on-time and on-target is going to prevail, and delays because of staffing shortages, or even visibility - runway surface conditions notwithstanding - are just not going to cut it as the economy evolves around us and value generation becomes the key performance indicator.
8:59 lol, that makes total sense!...i always wondered why you sounded like a swede with a significant dutch accent. 🤔🤣
Swede, working for Irish people for 21 years.
Your comments regarding Control Tower heights should have included... The Vancouver Harbour Control Tower is the only one in Canada specifically for a water aerodrome. At 142 m (466 ft) above ground it is the highest control tower in the world. and is located on top of the Granville Square building.
Looking forward to a history of ATC, and maybe also one about the air mail pilots that used those arrows.
I'd also like to hear the Mentour take on the pan-am clipper that had to fly home the wrong way around the globe after war broke out.
Added difficulty; Air Traffic Controllers have to remain current, this can be difficult on a small airfield, with limited movements. US Army Germany, it was proposed to set up a Tower operators trainer, suggestion's were then made that if visual from actual operational airfields was added it would add realism. THEN the question was asked could this be used to update currency?
I live a few miles from FNL in Colorado where they are still working on getting the remote tower approved. My first thought on the remote tower was a guy in his home watching a single monitor flipping between a video feed and solitaire! It's nice to see how sophisticated remote towers are and any doubts I had about the project at FNL have faded. Thanks for this video!
My pleasure, thank you too for sharing!
Thanks so much for creating and sharing this informative and timely video. Great job. Keep it up. I remember reading about these over a decade ago in Aviation Week. I think that overall they are a positive for safety and for the ATC staff.
I’ve got for and against views. For- surely the visibility and information would stop many runway incursions? And overlaying other info like Acceleration sounds really useful. Might also give controllers an easy ability to up skill on a busier airport. Against- when I solo’d my instructor made me go up and do an afternoon in the control tower. I learned more in that 3 hours than the rest of my training… keep up the great work Petter..
What if a pigeon, a seagull or even a larger bird decides to stand in front of the camera?
Ha! Interesting question
They have alarms/klaxons
considering how long virtual towers have been operating - i'm sure that has happened multiple times over the years!
@mentournow the place is pronounced Swan-ick not swan-wick. A word where one W is silent and one isnt. The joys of English language 😂
As a WRC guy, we’ve been using triple redundancy comms via satellite, radio planes and helicopters and portable land radio for at least 22 years. All of this is for safety. And we do it in remote locations without any infrastructure. Only the control centre has wired connectivity to antennas, backup generators and so on. And it’s mobile, so we can take it anywhere we need it. It also relays key information to other data centres elsewhere, even to mobile devices. Inmarsat has been doing a massive job on connecting basically all freight ships at sea… for a long time. As you say, aviation is always lagging in terms of innovation. Great video!
I feel like the best would be somewhere in the middle, like a tower with very powerful cameras and windows with augmented reality to have the markings on the actual window
I worked in a particle physics group in college, and remote work was pretty common there before covid! It's inconvenient and expensive if you need to fly to and from CERN for every little thing😀It's fun most of the time to meet people from around the world but you'd have to do 4am presentations sometimes.
Remote towers are also useful if an airport already has a regular control tower to provide redundancy if the regular tower needs to go offline. Budapest airport has a remote tower for this reason since 2017. They are planning to move more operations to the remote tower gradually.
Hola Amigo!! Sr Petrus, Pedro,Petter!!😂 Buenas noches!! In this video you gave us a detailed, instructional insight into control towers @airports and their very important role.As you pointed out having a clear view of all the aircraft moving around taxiways,runways, ramps/aprons is the control towers priority. You have taught us about different types of runways, width, length,markings, parallel, intersecting and materials used to construct them like cement, asphalt etc.Then you talk about remote control tower locations within the airfield using new visual technology and ground sensors,lights, ground radar etc.Long time ago i remember a discussion about new airport, runway design that would greatly reduce the probability of runway incursions, eliminate waiting time for takeoff clearance at the same time saving significant money on fuel for airlines and airport operating cost.This new idea was by designing new "oval runway"..( i remember you mentioning this in a video)!! Which truly makes sense.!! Keep doing what you do Captain!! You have taught many of us very important lessons regarding the B 737 and also about aviation safety!! BTW- Last few times i flew commercial i was wearing a few of my "mentour tshirts" on my flight from KMCO to TJSJ 2 weeks ago i had my black "this is how i roll" tshirt and the FO was standing at his door greeting passengers,as soon as he saw the desigh he gave me a thumbs up😂😂😂 on the way back i wore the "positive attitude" shirt...i had also purchased the " papi light's" shirt..once again Thanks Capt!!!
PS :( your FS CG tech is #1!!!)
Great job!!
Just before I left as Chair of the Leesburg VA, USA airport commission we started a contract with SAAB for a remote tower. Started testing in 2015 and in 2023 they stopped gathering data and left Leesburg. The town of Leesburg will be going to a conventional tower. I still fly to Leesburg (KJYO) frequently and it’s a pretty busy reliever airport for Washington Dulles KIAD). I don’t know what technology was in the remote tower but having it there was a huge benefit largely due to the complex airspace and additional procedures surrounding the Washington DC area since 911. I wasn’t aware of a lot of the tech you showed, and where a physical tower is not practical remote ones seem to make sense. As for busier airports I’m not sure as yet, need more data and research (human factors, tech, etc.) but I’m sure there will be a place for them in the ATC system (I’m a retired 30 year Washington ARTCC controller, aviation systems engineer, and 47 year commercial pilot with over 12K hours). Love your videos! ❤
I think when we would eventually use this remote tower that would probably work for 24/7, It need to have a very good redundancy system if one camera that view a specific angle fails. Also it would look weird to see an airport without a tower on it, it's been a such recognizable thing to any airport and it'll be weird to seeing it gone
Yes, but this technology has SO many advantages.
@@MentourNow Looking forward how it would run on a very busy international airports, since it has so much potential to reduce huge workloads on airports like it. Another bonus if it could reduce the amount of accidents and near misses we've been experiencing more lately
The point is to have redundant cameras, so every angle is covered by at least 2 and perhaps more cameras. If one fails, it can be replaced or fixed without disturbing operations as the other cameras will cover its field of view in the meantime.
There is an obvious human factors problem about a single controller operating several airports: that they lose track of which airport they are controlling.
It's a very interesting and timely topic. Technology has vastly improved aviation safety, both in air traffic and onboard aircraft. My primary concern would be where and how the remote locations are set up, both with the number of controllers and redundancy. Another factor to consider is the invaluable knowledge a local controller can provide. I have relied on local tower or approach controllers when working an aircraft making an emergency landing. Their knowledge of streets and geography are invaluable.
I do believe we will see more and more remote towers, I only hope the contracts for the systems are not given to the lowest bidder.
The way to address technologies concerns for the large airports is to have the ATC wear augmented reality glasses. This way they still have the windows to look out of in case the tech fails.
As an IT and network engineer, my biggest concern of these systems is about organized (often by enemy countries, i.e. China, Russia etc) hackers attack. The damage they can do here can be VERY high, also in terms of lives...
The idea in itself is surely great but i have a few questions about certain situations.
Like.. one controller to manage multiple (even if small) airports simultaneously.. doesn't sound very safe.
Or what happens if connection between those remote towers and the controlroom is cut during busy times? it's technology. No redundancy will ever 100% guarantee no accidental downtime ever.
Especially in a country like Germany where internet connections aren't known for their extreme reliability.
Very interesting presentation. Excellent presentation as usual. Thank you.
My pleasure!
Erfurt (EDDE) is my hometown airport and I have been fascinated with the concept of remote ATC being done there ever since I have first read about it. It's nice seeing in mentioned here.
Lots of advantages. I guess it's the next step to AI controllers though. Many years down the line granted but you can see the pattern emerging.
Given how often AI gives false data or fabricates claims, we should keep it far away from critical systems. The last thing we need is a cheap ChatGPT clone halucinating airspeed and runway conditions.
Maybe not. In Britain, at Oxford University, AI was tested to produce a safe rail system. The answer was brilliant! Stop running trains!
There is a major problem with remote towers: what if the internet goes down? Then the controllers can neither see what is happening at the airport nor talk to the pilots. I'm sure I don't have to point out how that can lead to all kinds of problems.
I think you haven't watched the whole vid :) He touches on that subject.
Redundant links are a thing, surprisingly.
@@idlegandalfIn that section of the video, it was about moving the controllers from the tower to a more normal office building on the same airport. In such cases, having a dedicated, triple redundant network is doable. When the airport is hundreds of kilometers away from the control center, that seems less feasible.
As mentioned in the video the links between the airport and remote control tower are dedicated links which don't go through the public internet. Though they probably share some actual physical infrastructure along the way.
They don't use the internet. They use a separate dedicated connection with redundancies.
Petter, I didn't know you were from Övik too :D Not that many people that leaves the high coast area, but I guess that's a part of the job. Great videos though, love the technical aspects! Makes me inspired to take up flight lessons my self, even if just for light aircraft.
It’s similar to railroad operations, where the classical “towers” have already vanished completely like on class I railroads in the US or in Netherland or are phased out as in Germany. This was possible as the process of checking if a certain track was occupied or cleared completely changed to electrical components that later (I guess from the 1960/70ies onwards) also were able to detect and track train numbers.
In Germany there’s a movement decentralizing the huge train control hubs in metropolitan cities to more regional hubs due to the fact that it’s more easy to recruit staff there (rents in the big cities are horrible).
So it’s interesting to see a similar development in the aviation industry now. I will stay curious!
When this creates the most devastating carnage in aviation history, I will be the one saying, "Told you so", and the politicians will be saying, "we didnt know about the software bugs".
Boeing will be laughing with all that heat diverted away from their relentless corruptions.
As if software isn't in everything these days. What do you think controls the airplanes?
In case you haven't noticed, having controllers on-site hasn't prevented a stunning number of runway incursions and near-misses over the past couple of years. Having virtual windows with integration of ADSB data on them would likely have prevented many of these attacks of human stupid.
@@PatrickSennett I would even say that runway incursions could probably be detected faster with the help of these systems, especially when it is dark outside like with the incident at Narita a few weeks ago.
It's always easy to say "I told you so", it's easy to be critical. But you should not just criticize something because it is different. Remote towers can help solve multiple issues, if you don't like the solution, offer your own.
I sense a slippery slope. After remote towers, they will propose pilotless passenger jets, aka passenger drones, and I won't get in one.
Personally, I refuse to get on a horseless carriage!
Thats like compairing a propeller engine to a jet engine, not driver to driverless@@Astlaus
@@SpidaMez that's comparing progress to progress.
@@Hans-gb4mv one is progessivs, the other is dangerous
@@SpidaMez I know, it's a tongue-in-cheek response. I just wanted to placate the general resistance to technical progress.
Always informative information,❤
ATC history would definitely be interesting to learn about, and hope you would make a video on it!
I've never been against technology and it's advancement of techniques. With that said, as a fan of aviation and a frequent flyer, it's going to take a LOT of convincing to get on board with remote ATCs. I can think of numerous reasons why they are a bad idea, and one of the main reasons is the loss of power, which can happen during severe storms. I don't need to explain that any further, I'm sure. You have provided some good reasons why some of the benefits would be great! As a pilot, I'd like to know what YOU think about being controlled by a remote tower??
That’s no different from a storm knocking out power to a manned tower. Also if they have a battery backup that would provide a warning when the system will shut down it gives time to stop flights coming in and out
@@tomstravels520 Fair point!
Outsource all controlling to India 👍.
😂😂
@@MentourNow
Are international standards being set up for this?
@@mballer It won't happen. While it's easy to build national data links that are outside of the internet, internationally it's basically impossible. Remember the link can't fail.
@@therealdutchidiot
I was kidding.
Although international standards would make it easier to setup new systems at each airport and controllers could easily move around if systems worked the same everywhere.
@@mballer That much is true, but creating these data links internationally isn't in the cards.
I can see certain to also some shortcomings.
The first is a controller sitting in a room some kilometres away is not attuned to directions on which way to look if aircraft are joining from multiple directions as they are not familiar with the immediate local area which a local controller would be.
Secondly your point about just switching rooms due to shortages poses difficulty as you have to be qualified at each airfield you work at.
There would still be extensive training required in noise abatement, local procedures and other vital operational requirements just like you have different type ratings for each aircraft on your licence.
Therefore, it is not as easy to implement as first thought.
Great vlog though.😊
In Canada, the enroute ATC is already remote - once you go outside the local control zone, they are completely remote. There are 5 enroute ATC buildings in Canada and each can handle any sector of flight in Canada. In the mid 2000's, the location of one moved from on location at an airport to a remote building in a suburb with no loss - during the changeover another center handled the duties temporarily. This was done to put those controllers first in a place that wouldn't flood, and second in a much more seismically strong building. So remote towers add something unique, but not entirely aspect to operations.
And anyways, there are airports where there is a UNICOM or other traffic operator that is offsite - they can't provide full tower capabilities but do take note of traffic. They can't clear you to land or take off, but can grant IFR clearances and such. At best they may have a radar picture, but otherwise are just relying on pilots reporting their status.
So remote control towers are a thing I see happening - my local airport became a Class C airport but turns into an uncontrolled airport after the shift's over. Sometimes they'll stay late if they know a flight is coming in, but hey, that's a nicety. So it may become hybrid - a full tower during the day (they have ground and air controllers during busy times!) then a remote tower at night when light traffic means it's not worthwhile to run a shift. Sometimes there's only one controller handling ground and air traffic, and what if they get sick? It means a remote tower can take over. So I see the potential for it.
As for cameras, they are really good at seeing through fog and darkness - quite amazing what your smartphone camera can do these days. So I have no doubt today's 4K screens and hundreds of megapixel cameras are quite capable of offering a lot of features. Even the panoramic cameras can track aircraft and "zoom in" without actually doing any zooming to point out an aircraft and then provide a full resolution view of the aircraft. And you can get redundancy if say, a remote tower building goes offline, you can have another building resume operations or take over. Or redundant remote towers - if fog obscures the airport on one mast, erect another mast so you can have another viewpoint - masts are cheap to build so there's no reason why ATC has to struggle to see the farthest corners of the airport. And hey, all that data is recorded - on-airport accidents would now have lots of extra views for investigators.
The only major concern is security, of course, Everyone is afraid of hacking and it's a primary concern.
No, I don’t see them as feasible. Nothing beats, first hand ability to sense outside world yourself.
That’s why Boeing has limited even Fly by wire ability compared to Airbus’ programmed ‘envelopes’, so Pilots can still feel the realness of the Aircraft they’re flying.
It’s a bit different when we are dealing with controllers though. Remember, we already deal with remote control centers for 95% of the flight.
@@MentourNow you’ve got a point there - remote controllers for high altitude flight does makes sense, because aircraft are all automated up there flying on pre programmed Airways, therefore are able to maintain due separation not requiring attentive vigilance.
However at an airport, it’s different. There’s a lot of flux, dynamics (not automated) happening that is not predictable.
Therefore, the need for direct eye contact and depth perception to be able to get an immediate tab on issues.
How would remote controllers at night, would have been able to notice amidst all the conflicting lights, the Dash 8 itself invaded the runway onto the oncoming JAL A350 in Haneda ? The real timers failed themselves😳.
At night and in eg. fog they could use night vision an infrared cameras to augment the visible picture. You can see much more on cameras today than with the naked eye.
what do you mean not "feasible" - it's already happening in at least four different countries listed in this video !
You spoke about Sweden and Norway as an examples of using remot teowers. Another country close by, Estonia has been implementing their own kind of remote tower system by a company Cybernetica but as this was not their core business, then couple of years ago that solution was sold to Adacel which is a big corporation dealing with air traffic management systems. So also in Estonia, there are now couple of airports already using remote tower solutions.
14:42 ah yes throwback to the time when a buddy who worked in a power grid control center told me to come over in the evening and bring some pizza. They were on a maintenance off-time so we put the big screens to a good use (CS:source and Half Life 2 😅)
Imagine if the US spent 100 Billion dollars on upgrading airport infrastructure instead of sending it to Ukraine to be laundered.
Hmmm, political comments on an aviation video
What if Russia wasn't bombing Ukrainian infrastructure? See; your comment is moot. Back to the topic at hand.
Imagine the opportunity to fight a major threat to western civilization for cents on the dollar.... oh, wait 😂
We are sending Ukraine pocket change and the geopolitical benefits aren't even measurable.
A Swedish pilot talking about air traffic control and other fun facts in aviation. some war. very similar topics🙄
Imagine sending stock which was about to be retired or destroyed or replaced within 0-5 years and buying new stock to replace it with that 100B…
Except that’s what has happened to most of the money.
These new systems are a definite improvement because situation awareness of BOTH the local and ground controller is enhanced. Aircraft lining up to takeoff from the wrong runway (that may be closed due to obstructions and/or construction equipment resulting in the death of everyone on board) parallel to the correct runway will be spotted and warned immediately.
At present many ground controllers cannot see an aircraft until it pushes back onto the taxiway. With the remote system, they will be able to see any aircraft on the airport, regardless of terminal obstructions or weather. My brother (then a pilot for Eastern Airlines) observed a nearby passenger jet wing partly crush (mounting over) a lowered extension walkway when parking from pilot inattention. Remote ground control would have prevented that. This airport was Miami International. Ground control could not see the aircraft after it left the taxiway to park.
Even more importantly, as Mentour Pilot mentioned, the local controller (that is ATC speak for the person in the tower cab that works the aircraft approaching the airport and landing and the aircraft taking off) will not have to turn around looking for aircraft entering the pattern in a different direction from the aircraft on final.
Distraction caused accidents from aircraft taking off from another active runway AWAY from those on final on the primary active runway will not happen as ALL the airport traffic will be in front of the Local Controller. My experience is mostly in Enroute Radar control, but I learned at Syracuse, NY Tracon what a hastle Local Control requiring turning this way and that is.
All that said, I DO NOT think it is a good idea to remote the ATC personnel away from the airport. While I was at Syracuse Tracon in 1981 (during the ATC strike when we were severely understaffed), an accident happened that no remote would have detected. A mere 70 yards from the tower cab building (small building only about 50 feet tall), in morning daylight around 9:00 AM, a Piper Cherokee Six pilot couldn't start the aircraft. He left a passenger inside and did not set the brakes properly (with the mags on and too high a throttle setting). He propped it and it started. The aircraft roared forward and he dodged it and tried unsuccessfully to get in. The passenger (old lady) was not a pilot and was in a panic. We in the tower cab could see nothing, because it was so close to the building. The Cherokee Six went straight into the side of the building, and stopped. The passenger was not hurt, and the engine quit (a propellor stops pretty quick when encountering solid concrete). Somebody on the second floor called the cab saying they heard a THUMP! against the building. We felt nothing. Somebody went downstairs and saw what had happened, with the thorougly embarrased pilot explaining his folly. The building wall had some damage, but it was mosltly superficial and easily repaired. The Cherokee Six had a crushed nose, nose wheel, cracked windshield, one very dented wing leading edge and a bent propeller.
The physical presence of an ATC person near the accident location was the sine qua non that enabled us to identify it. I do not expect vibration sensors to be put in airport buildings, do you?
Forcing one person or a team of air traffic controllers to work MORE than one airport is an accident waiting to happen.
Just put them in an office in the terminal building. IF there is a crash, they are physically THERE to communicate with other authorities (fire truck, police, hospital, etc.) in the unlikely, but possible, aircraft crash caused total communications failure.
Remote is great, but a human physical presence is essential for the welfare of the passengers, crew and other people on and around the airport immediately after an aircraft accident. Stop the greed. Help small airport communities KEEP their ATC jobs.
Remember this when the poobahs want to automate fire fighting on airports. That TOO would be really intellimoronic GREED BASED.
Hey mentour! Love the videos as always! I was wondering if you could make something like this but explaining ADSB and RNAV? I keep reading it but I still don’t really fully understand and I think you could explain this well
I worked at a military airport in the USA with very low traffic I was part of the engineering maintenance and management system. We had fabrication facilities but because of the fact that manned aircraft a un-manned aircraft would land there. Also sometimes autonomous aircraft would have an issue and return to their launch location autonomously without warning. In this case I seriously don’t think that a remote system would work. Further while a camera mounting location would need less comforts like the only thing that you could drop from the design would be a small kitchen you would still need a restroom, an HVAC system, insulation, a computer data management system, as for a system check area it would very similar to what the air controllers need maybe you wouldn’t binoculars.