NEWS ~ A first in France: Tours airport will be remotely controlled!
The concept of a remote air traffic control tower, or remote tower center, is coming to France. From a center located at Toulouse-Blagnac airport, air traffic at Tours airport will be managed from 2024. Explanations.
The process is called Remote tower center, or Digital Advanced Tower (DAT). It is the dream of accountants and air traffic control managers, especially when an airport is not very busy. The idea is to control an airport's air traffic remotely, from a center that may be hundreds of miles away. Air traffic controllers then not only manage approaches and flight safety without seeing them in person, but also taxi, take-off, landing and parking maneuvers.
The first experiment in France will involve the Tours-Val-de-Loire airport. Work will begin in the next few days and the new "tower" should be operational within six months. Initially, tests will be carried out until 2024 with the presence of controllers on site and remotely. The control center will be located approximately 500 km from Tours in Toulouse.
To begin with, remote controllers will only handle the IFR portion of traffic, i.e. instrument and blind flights. This applies to all airliners and commercial aircraft. VFR flights, which mainly concern leisure aviation, will then be managed and mixed with other flights. To manage taxiing traffic on the taxiways and to monitor take-offs and final approaches, the new tower will be equipped with a large antenna with 18 cameras. These "eyes" will allow remote controllers to scan the sky and the terrain as if they were there.
Aviation means maximum security. Also, to manage remote flights, the optical links are physically doubled with two different operators to reinforce reliability. In terms of cyber security, where zero risk is far from being a reality, as shown by the various cyber attacks on hospitals, Frequentis, the company in charge of the remote tower center system, is confident enough to meet this challenge.
Up to five airports controlled by one center:
So why set up this "first" in Tours? Previously, air traffic was essentially managed by military control because of the presence of the fighter school on the ground. However, since July 2021, the air base has closed and the school has joined the Cognac base. With the departure of the military air traffic controllers, the question of the closure of the tower, and therefore of the airport for commercial flights, has arisen.
It must be said that this airport has a limited traffic of 180,000 passengers per year, with most of the flights being operated by Ryanair during the summer. As is often the case for small airports with few passengers, management remains a financial drain for the community, even if it is rather profitable for the company delegated with the public service contract. This first deployment of a remote tower center will ensure that no one loses out in this story and that the airport remains open.
Although this arrival is a first in France, the concept has been discussed and developed for ten years. The first deployment of such a structure dates back to 2015 in Sweden. Other projects have since emerged in other Nordic countries or in the UK, Belgium, Germany and Brazil. In the case of the French project and in the future, the objective is to control up to five regional airports from the remote center of Toulouse-Blagnac airport. It is therefore expected that other regional airports will lose their local air traffic control service in the coming years.
Comments
Post a Comment