The Air Traffic Control Tower of the Future Doesn't Include Humans

CravenRaven76 writes: Sweden is testing the future of air traffic control at Ornskoldsvik Airport. An 80 foot tall unmanned tower at the airport houses 14 high-definition cameras to help controllers survey the site with better-than-human vision. Video from the cameras is transmitted to Sunvsal Airport, where a controller guides the planes. Potential future plans include grouping every airport controller together at distant facilities in order to save costs of running multiple air traffic control towers.

Comments

So not better just cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

One controller can do the work of many.
It is just a cost saving measure. Not a safety one.

Re:So not better just cheaper

[RogueyWon]

It can be both. I've worked in the aviation field and come across quite a few of the issues associated with this.

There are now some seriously busy ATC sectors around the globe; the ones around New York and London are probably the busiest, but there are plenty of others. The problem's a growing one; while global aviation demand fell during the early years of the recession, it is spiking back sharply now and looks set to continue to grow.

Without the IT systems that have already been brought in, management of some of the throughput rates in those very busy sectors today would be pretty much impossible. Going forward, more advanced systems are going to be needed to help manage down the potential for human error as things get very difficult indeed; take a look at London's airspace systems (with traffic flows from Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, London City and Southend all requiring management to maintain both throughputs and separations.

The risk comes from deskilling. No automation system is perfect and, in a safety critical sector like aviation, you need to be able to avoid compromising safety when systems fail. That might not require maintaining those throughput rates (realistically, you are going to accept flight delays and cancellations when you get a major IT failure), but it does involve being able to get aircraft that are in the air onto the ground safely.

To date, these issues have been managed. A major computer failure in the UK earlier this year was managed safely. But as you reduce the number of operators and, in many cases, shift their role to the management of IT systems rather than the management of air traffic, you have to face a real concern about how you keep the skills required to cope when things go wrong.

It's a tough one. But the industry is aware of it. Genuine cost-stripping is very rare in the aviation industry; it has a safety culture like nothing else I've ever seen.

The problem comes when we americanize this...

[Shadow of Eternity]

and try to make half as many air traffic controllers do twice the work.