London and Seattle are two cities that are very well known across the world, in international travel they are both major hubs to and from their respective countries. However, their approaches vary greatly when it comes to performing the task of managing the aircraft to and from airports. One takes a hands-on approach while the other has managed to go completely digital.
Seattle Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) has a lot of factors to contend with when performing aircraft monitoring and guidance procedures. Its area of responsibility is between the Olympic Mountain range and the Cascade Mountain range which lends it some very difficult terrain management. When you add in high peaks such as Mount Rainier at 14, 416 feet, you have even more to contend with. As I said earlier, this tower performs handing of international flights. The tower also performs monitoring of military operations happening in its area to include live fire ranges, Boeing tests experimental aircraft, and you even have flight training schools in operation. It all adds up to a very dynamic airspace. This is all managed by air traffic controllers on site, with one final controller who ultimately guides aircraft on final approach. This ensures that all flight rules in the sector can be obeyed, and safe landings can occur on the closely situated runways, one plane at a time.
London City Airport has decided to turn away from the traditional tower set-up for a more innovative solution to increasingly busy airways. They have installed a fully digital tower that utilizes 16 high-definition cameras to capture a complete field of view around the tower to control. This allows the air traffic flow to be managed from any ATC that has access to the now digital tower. In theory this allows controllers to assist other towers when they have a light load, and the other tower is in need of more manning. The feed is routed through a fiber line to NATS air traffic control center in Swanwick, and from there can be sent to other towers as deemed appropriate. It has an audio and radar link along with the cameras digital feeds which can provide motion tracking and magnified, on top of the cameras pivoting for better views as directed. The technology when combined with a controller can actually function together as a whole far better than a conventional tower as any needed data can be displayed along with the panoramic imagery. Altogether it sounds like something straight out of Iron Man to me.
References
Seattle TRACON (S46) (n.d.) FAA
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/air_traffic_services/tracon/s46
Facility Spotlight: Seattle TRACON (2016, August 12) NATCA
https://www.natca.org/2016/08/10/aug-12-2016-facility-spotlight-seattle-tracon/
London City is first major airport controlled by remote digital tower (2021, April 30) NATS
https://www.nats.aero/news/london-city-is-first-major-airport-controlled-by-remote-digital-tower/
Air traffic control goes virtual at one of London's Major Airports (2021, May 13) Michele Robson
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelerobson/2021/05/13/air-traffic-control-goes-virtual-at-one-of-londons-major-airports/?sh=37f8598d4fd4
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