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

Posted by samzenpus on from the let-the-machine-handle-it dept.

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.

3 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. What happens when video is lost? by Snotnose · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Either from a technical glitch, power outage, or whatever.

  2. How is this news? by mnmn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Remote ATC controllers are very common in Canada and USA (Peterborough for example). How is this anything new?

    Nav Canada has had ATC controllers sit in the ATC facility at Pearson airport while controlling multiple other airports for years or maybe decades. This is very common practice and all pilots know what an RCO is.

    The only difference I can spot here is they get webcams. That's hardly an important bit as the ATC never has to have visual of the plane. In a controlled airport the pilot just has to declare I have visual and thats good enough. Works similarly for taxiing aircraft.

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
  3. Re:Unpredicted situations by Aethedor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No. I'm a 39 year old IT security professional. Seen a lot of systems, seen a lot of code, seen a lot of things going wrong. Simply because of this. This is more than 30 years of computer experience speaking. Back to you.

    --
    It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.