In October 2021 the FAA announced it has “more than 100 aging control towers at regional and municipal airports across the United States that will eventually need to be replaced.”
Even U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg weighed in, saying, “For communities large and small, the air traffic control tower is an icon.”
Air traffic control towers as community icons? Really?
I wonder if the communities that surround California’s Reid-Hillview Airport (KRHV) look at their airport’s tower as a community icon. But I digress.
Apparently form is more important than function. That October announcment failed to mention remote or digital towers.
Instead, with this new design search, the FAA wants to develop a standardized design for towers that will:
- Meet operational and cost requirements
- Maximize energy efficiency
- Be easy to modify according to height needs
- Be rapidly constructed
Apparently no one (or not the right someones at the FAA and DOT) recall that back in 2018 Congress authorized the FAA to look at remote or digital towers as an alternative to the traditional control tower.
Today, two U.S. airports have operational remote towers: Leesburg Executive Airport (KJYO) in Virginia and Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport (KFNL) in Colorado.
The tower in Colorado is in the proverbial holding pattern. The remote tower was activated in November 2018 after being greenlighted in 2016.
Jason Licon, KFNL’s Airport Director, and Dave Ulane, Colorado DOT, Aeronautics Director told me, “the flexibility of remote towers is tremendous. It allows airports greater opportunities for development. With a traditional tower, line of site will forever be an issue. It will impact development. Cameras can be moved. Traditional towers, not so much.”
And yet, they wait.
More than 1,500 miles east in Leesburg, Virginia, the first operational remote control tower reached a milestone of sorts in November.
“More than five years of FAA formal evaluations and safety panels led to an initial operational phase, during which controllers safely managed more than 75,000 operations at Leesburg,” according to Saab officials.
A Nov. 22, 2021, Reason Foundation Aviation Policy Newsletter by Robert Poole offers a bit more detail.
“As I was writing this article, I learned that FAA has issued an ‘Operational Viability Decision’ on the Saab Remote Tower System at Leesburg, authorizing it to continue managing traffic there. This is not official ‘certification’ of the system, but it triggers the type certification process between Saab and FAA. Once that is done (no time frame was announced), the system will be approved as a non-federal system within the National Airspace System. Former FAA Chief Counsel Sandy Murdock, in JDA Journal, asks the obvious question: ‘Why Is It Taking So Long for the KYJO Saab Remote Tower Test by the FAA?’”
Why is it taking so long? Because it is the FAA.
When I put myself in the position of an FAA staffer who has authority to move the remote tower program forward, the Boeing 737 MAX crashes come to mind. As we are learning, the FAA delegated a tremendous amount of power to Boeing in the development of the MAX.
While delegation authority isn’t new, the broadness of that program’s authority was. And while remote towers are, at the end of 2021, not exactly new, they are when compared to traditional control towers. At least in the United States.
Add a pandemic into the mix and the FAA has multiple ready reasons to slow its roll.
The idea of replacing more than 100 aging traditional control towers with more than 100 new traditional control towers is frustrating to me.
We can see a path: It is remote towers. And that path is ahead of us. That path will allow us to put more towers at more airports, which will ultimately be a boon for operational safety.
Unless you are the FAA. In that case, the future is behind us.
Sad.
We should never forget the FAA motto -” We are not happy until you are not happy.” If there is a way to make a problem more difficult rather than find a solution the FAA will find it. Proof? Tell me in one (hopefully short) paragraph the present requirements regarding medicals. They started with a fairly easy to understand requirement – you don’t need one unless you fly for hire. Now start your understanding paragraph.
A few comments… Fud-4-thot…
What are Your, thoughts regarding commercial aircraft operating autonomously or remotely… without [2]… or at-least [1]… live/fully-trained aircrew sitting behind the windshield?
What constitutes an activity for a tower operator? IE: maintenance runs/towing/refueling? Static-tied-downs or hangar-doors opening/closing? Taxiing? Rolling onto/on/off an active runway? flight/collision lights-on/off? ADS-B on/off? Ultralights? All-GA types? All commercial types? All MIL-types? Helicopters? Routine operations? Crash-rescue/emergency operations? Hard surface and grass operations? Ground-vehicle intrusions into aircraft-active spaces? Airfield maintenance? Inter-communications with FAA/MIL ATC? Weather observations and effects on operations? Familiarity with the local airspace, conditions, flux-flow of traffic, day-in-day-out? Possible illegal/contraband operations? Etc.
MIL Tanker aircraft have relied on aircrew eyes-on, hands-on, the AR process at all times. This includes not just the AR process… but the awareness of the dance/interplay of multiple aircraft-types, pilot personalities, fuel states/criticalities and movements into receiver-position [to name a few obvious factors]. The new tanker relies on 100% remote operation of the air refueling system from the cockpit [not anywhere near where the work is being done], using camera systems. The challenge of vision systems in the full spectrum of day and night conditions, systems reliability and ‘back-end’ situational awareness has made this ‘simple decision’ very complex to execute.
I wonder if the technology could keep up with life and death reliability? Think about how many webcams we currently access that are down for days/weeks at a time. You’d probably have to have a technician at every remote site just to ensure the cameras are always up, (not to mention the high speed connection). I also wonder about zooming and how a remote tower controller could actually deal what’s going on near the tower and at the runway end simultaneously (think taxiing airplanes, birds, deer, dogs, etc). Could the technology keep up? I think 737 Max is a good compare. They thought they could undershoot the technology because the human could take over…not-so-much. Put too much technology in front of the human for too long and their common sense and hands on skills start to erode. The old habit of grabbing the binocs has to be replaced with something much more technical and challenging. Just sayin – the human to technology interface of this may be slowing things down.
How do light gun signals work from remote towers?
Both towers at KFNL and KJYO have digital remote light guns mounted on the top of the camera masts that can be aimed at the appropriate aircraft and activated from the control consoles.
Aren’t a lot of tower controllers looking at computer screens and not out side. So if so it don’t matter where they are physically located. Probably in the future the controllers will be at home in their pajamas “working”. At least they will be able to fill the positions of controller.
I believe the railroads have been controlled from Ft Worth Texas for years.
My flight review CFI is a past center controller. I asked where he physically worked. He said in a federal building in the basement.
I would like to visit a virtual tower. Where is the FNL one located?
I was fortunate enough to visit the remote tower at KFNL in February, 2020, and it was quite impressive. Not sure how easy it is to schedule a tour at either location, but it would be worth it if possible.
It seems like a no-brainer to move forward with the new technology, but when the FAA and politicians are in the mix…
75,000 safe operations in over 5 years is less than 15,000 operations per year which is about 41 operations per day (average). That sounds like a quiet airport, which I would expect if that was where the FAA chose to run a potentially dangerous experiment.
Operations get much more difficult the more traffic there is. From my experience at KBED (Bedford Massachusetts) and KBVY (Beverly Massachusetts) a nice summer weekend will bring out lots of local pilots and student pilots. I have experienced Air Traffic Controller “saturation” at an estimated 30 to 60 operations per hour!
That assumes that the SAAB data is unbiased, which is suspect…
Don’t bust the chops of Buttigieg for his comment on iconic towers, he’s simply quoting what he was told to say. He’s never had an original thought in his empty head.
Remote towers ought to work fine, using technology available. But never underestimate the FAAs ability to screw things up.
I worked on remote tower research at MIT Lincoln Lab a decade ago. My understanding is that the big resistance to the concept is not coming from the FAA; it is the controllers’ union, which believes that remote towers = fewer jobs.
Sadly, you are probably right to a degree. And, to pull that thread further, if controller union concerns are indeed part of the equation here, then that actually translates into it being an issue for Federal politicians. And, if it is an issue for Federal politicians, that makes it an issue for the FAA types that have to take a position on how to replace those aging towers. And, we must remember that replacing old conventional towers with new conventional towers also generally requires local construction contracts, and that makes it an issue for local politicians as well, which only increases the political pressure that may come to bear.
So, indeed, technology and practicality may have surprisingly little to do with it. What might seem to be a straight-forward, easy, “no-brainer” decision to the uninitiated (in other words, a sane person existing in the “real” world) is really just another political chess piece where what actually matters is who is getting what (taxpayer) money sent where for whom.
I suspect you’re close to 100% correct Kevin.
Didn’t we see an article in the past couple of years about controller overload because of staffing shortages? Didn’t we read about new recruitment programs trying to get more applicants for the training slots? If that’s true, then the “union” isn’t keeping the available positions filled and shouldn’t be worried about layoffs – or are they still pissed at Ronald Reagan?
However, I will suggest that working in a physical tower is probably better for their eyesight than sitting in front of a screen every day.
The FAA and by extension Congress are responsible for staffing levels, no?