Baltic FAB/B4 Consortium representative in the project: SE ORO NAVIGACIJA
Project snapshot:
Analysis of the present situation indicates the fact that the maintenance and upkeep costs of old Tower facilities are inefficient and expensive particularly at low to medium density airports. The relative cost of ATS is high compared to the ATS tasks that have to be performed.
The effect of an ATC tower unit being closed down at an aerodrome, controlled or un-controlled (e.g. maintenance or crisis) must be managed. Contingency solutions for ATC or other related services at airports are costly and inefficient and the alternative cost of closing and/or insurance costs against closing an aerodrome may be very high for the airport owner in today’s operations.
SESAR 1 performed trials to figure out the possibility to perform ATS from 1 CWP (controller working position) to several connected airports in a remote tower module. Up to 3 airports were simulated during the V2 real-time simulations. The projects last trials had 2 small AFIS airports connected in a V3 passive shadow mode trial. Contingency trials aimed to find an operational solution as well as technical systems for provision of remote tower services in case of a closure of the ordinary tower at a medium sized airport.
The main work on validation side in SESAR 1 was done in the area of single tower. Multi Remote TWR especially parallel mode was only partly covered in validation exercises. Therefore there is still a gap between the status of SESAR 1 and request from the market regarding a highly efficient multi remote tower solution. This gap should be filled by SESAR 2020 PJ05 solutions to bring the multi remote tower operations to a higher maturity level and provide a baseline for implementations.