Comments on: Are Tower Controllers an Endangered Species?

By: GNAStech

GNAStech — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:50:44 +0000

Interesting. If I may ask, where did you read about this possibility? I’m a GNAS specialist and I haven’t even heard rumors about this. If it is true, the actual job of aircraft separation and clearance delivery aside, I can see where the FAA (or whomever is proposing this) may actually be building a case for privatizing all ATC and absolving itself of liability. With airports losing positive control, how many aircraft collisions deaths will be considered acceptable? It makes me wonder why the FAA mandates we do risk assessment at all.

By: Paul Cox

Paul Cox — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:02:54 +0000

I think it’s a lot more practical to simply close these towers than this whole “remote control” business. The only money they’ll truly save is on the physical assets of the tower; they’ll still have automation costs, remoting the radio lines costs, etc.

As far as doing away with controllers completely… not going to happen, not for at least a generation and probably more.

Look at it this way: They’ve tested aircraft that can taxi, depart, fly enroute, land, and taxi all on their own- not even with a remote UAV type of operator. The technology is there, although still not ready to go live all the time. And even if it were, would anyone seriously jump onto automated aircraft?

But when it comes to ATC, they haven’t even TESTED anything that completely automates the process.

Autoland is used in low visibility conditions at times by pilots. Airplanes are being “flown” by computers all over the world. Yet for ATC, the state-of-the-art at enroute centers in the United States is URET, and believe me, that automation tool is NOT foolproof. We regularly see bad alerts on non-existent traffic… and see it miss collision courses between aircraft that ARE going to get too close.

What this “remote tower” thing really comes from is people in aviation, both within and outside of the FAA or ATC-providing services, that think those smaller towers represent too much in the way of costs.

They’re the same people who think that pilots cost too much (and hence have created a pay structure where new regional right-seaters are making less than 20 grand a year) and taxes are too high (hence they’re pushing to shift taxation away from their carriers onto other folks) and that actually hauling baggage costs too much (hence fees for every bag) and so forth and so on.

Same mentality, same people. If we want to have the same situation as Colgan Air, sure, let’s remote out and contract out and do away with controllers as much as we can.

By: Local ATC: An endangered species? | Golf Hotel Whiskey

Local ATC: An endangered species? | Golf Hotel Whiskey — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:43:46 +0000

[...] posed an interesting question on Jetwhine when he asked if local air traffic controllers are an endangered species. He points back to a time when pilots and flight instructors such as himself and his students could [...]

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:53:34 +0000

I always like to visit the Tower Cab. Every student pilot should be required to do so. If they decide to automate ATC facilities, then who in the heck is going to clear me for an intersection take-off in a Helio Courier??

They better not…