Security alerts can shut down control towers. How does the airport ensure minimum disruption in an emergency? This question has been addressed by SESAR looking at contingency situations for airports. Contingency towers are not new, and already operate at London, Brussels, and nearcompletion at Budapest. They provide operational resilience and safety assurance should the primary tower be compromised.
This solution brings additional technology into play, and addresses issues including accessibility, training and security to deliver more resilience and a higher efficiency in degraded situations. A remote facility offers a cost-efficient alternative to building new infrastructure onsite. It can provide air traffic control services as close to full-operating capacity as possible, and can feature additional information feeds to enhance the data available. Most importantly, it can maintain safe flight operations, with minimum disruption to the flights operating to and from the airport affected.
Shadow-mode exercises have been carried out to examine exactly how a remote tower facility can provide contingency services at medium-sized airports. The exercises assessed the transition time necessary to switch from the primary tower to the contingency facility, what level of service can be provided in the absence of an out-of-the-window view, and what information can be accessed by controllers. They also looked at controller workload, situational awareness, and human performance.
The SESAR Solution is available for industrialisation and is implemented in the following airports: Are Ostersund, Budapest, Kiruna, Linkoping City, London City, Saarbrücken, Sundsvall-Timraa, and Umea .
SJU references: #13/ Release 5
Benefits
- Increased cost efficiency
- Improved resilience in degraded situations
Datapack