Air Traffic Control

How the FAA Let Remote Tower Technology Slip Right Through Its Fingers

September 12, 2023 by Robert Mark

In June 2023, the FAA published a 167-page document outlining the agency’s desire to replace dozens of 40-year-old airport control towers with new environmentally friendly brick-and-mortar structures. These towers are, of course, where hundreds of air traffic controllers ply their trade … ensuring the aircraft within their local airspace are safely separated from each other during landing and takeoff.

The FAA’s report was part of President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act enacted on November 15, 2021. That bill set aside a whopping $25 billion spread across five years to cover the cost of replacing those aging towers. The agency said it considered a number of alternatives about how to spend that $5 billion each year, rather than on brick and mortar buildings.

One alternative addressed only briefly before rejecting it was a relatively new concept called a Remote Tower, originally created by Saab in Europe in partnership with the Virginia-based VSATSLab Inc. The European technology giant has been successfully running Remote Towers in place of the traditional buildings in Europe for almost 10 years. One of Saab’s more well-known Remote Tower sites is at London City Airport. London also plans to create a virtual backup ATC facility at London Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe.

A remote tower and its associated technology replace the traditional 60-70 foot glass domed control tower building you might see at your local airport, but it doesn’t eliminate any human air traffic controllers or their roles in keeping aircraft separated.

Inside a Remote Tower Operation

In place of a normal control tower building, the airport erects a small steel tower or even an 8-inch diameter pole perhaps 20-40 feet high, similar to a radio or cell phone tower. Dozens of high-definition cameras are attached to the new Remote Tower’s structure, each aimed at an arrival or departure path, as well as various ramps around the airport.

Using HD cameras, controllers can zoom in on any given point within the camera’s range, say an aircraft on final approach. The only way to accomplish that in a control tower today is if the controller picks up a pair of binoculars. The HD cameras also offer infrared capabilities to allow for better-than-human visuals, especially during bad weather or at night.

The next step in constructing a remote tower is locating the control room where the video feeds will terminate. Instead of the round glass room perched atop a standard control tower, imagine a semi-circular room located at ground level. Inside that room, the walls are lined with 14, 55-inch high-definition video screens hung next to each other with the wider portion of the screen running top to bottom.

After connecting the video feeds, the compression technology manages to consolidate 360 degrees of viewing area into a 220-degree spread across the video screens. That creates essentially the same view of the entire airport that a controller would normally see out the windows of the tower cab without the need to move their head more than 220 degrees. Another Remote Tower benefit is that each aircraft within visual range can be tagged with that aircraft’s tail number, just as it might if the controller were looking at a radar screen. [Read more…] about How the FAA Let Remote Tower Technology Slip Right Through Its Fingers

An Unexpected Christmas Gift from the Illinois Aviation Hall of Fame

December 21, 2020 by Robert Mark

Unless you’re an aviation history geek or just a pilot who resides in Illinois, you might not have heard of Octave Chanute. I only knew the name early on when I joined the Air Force because there was a Base in southern Illinois named for the famed French-born railroad chief engineer. Early in his life, Chanute became fascinated by flight. He died in Chicago in 1910.

Once bitten by the aviation bug, Chanute was determined in the latter part of the 19^th Century to interest others in the hurdles of then-modern aviation. A bit of a writer himself, Chanute corresponded with other aeronautical experts of the time and gathered their insights into a publication, Progress in Flying Machines, published in 1894.

According to Britannica.com, “Chanute also organized sessions on aeronautics at the meetings of major engineering societies, arranged conferences on flight technology at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893) and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis (1904), and offered assistance to promising young aviation enthusiasts.” One of Chanute’s early gliders became the foundation of the early design work for both Wilbur and Orville Wright. “No one was too humble to receive a share of his time,” Wilbur Wright noted in 1910. “In patience and goodness of heart, he has rarely been surpassed. Few men were more universally respected or loved.” So around Illinois for sure, Octave Chanute was a pretty big man around campus.

I first noticed Chanute’s name again as an early inductee to the Illinois Aviation Hall of Fame (IAHF). Scrolling through the list I ran across other — somewhat more recent inductees — like my friend, the late E. Allan Englehardt, a retired United captain, CFI, and DPE who ran what was without a doubt the best CFI refresher course known to man. I found George Priester there too. My first assignment as an air traffic controller back in the 1970s was to Palwaukee Airport (now called Chicago Executive), then a private airport owned by Mr. Priester. I still talk to his son Charlie — who somehow managed to pass me on my multi-engine check ride in a Cessna 310 back in the 70s.

Jesse Stonecipher is there too. He ran the University of Illinois’ Institute of Aviation back in the 1960s that I attended for a short time. Famed airshow aerobatic pilot and instructor Duane Cole’s made the list of inductees, as did Frasca International’s Rudy Frasca. Merill Meigs is on the list. You might know him as the name behind Chicago’s Meigs Field (CGX) where I also worked as a controller. While I didn’t know Carl Unger or his “Breezy” personally, I feel like I did because I flew with Carl’s son Rob at Midway Airlines (“Once the pandemics over, I coming down for that Breezy ride Rob”).

My friends Jack Sheridan and Bev Greenhill are on the list, as well as Al Palicki, Howard Levinson, Doug Powers, and even my CFI buddy Lou Wipotnik are on the list of people Illinois wants to remember. Even before they were famous inductees, I knew Bev and Allan, and Howard and Jack and Al and Lou from the Chicago Executive Pilots Association where I’ve been serving as treasurer the past few years.

The Plot Thickens

So you’re probably wondering why you’re reading this history lesson about Illinois Aviation. I was working up to that … I feel a bit awkward admitting it actually. [Read more…] about An Unexpected Christmas Gift from the Illinois Aviation Hall of Fame

August 3, 1981 – PATCO Strike Remembered 38 Years Later

August 3, 2019 by Robert Mark

Ed note: It was 38 years ago today that the U.S. aviation system was turned upside down out. What have we learned in those decades since? Many controllers today are again working 10-hour days six days a week.

___________________________

I remember the morning of August 3, 1981, vividly as I turned on the TV to find news stories of air traffic controller members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization-PATCO-marching with picket signs at the base of the tower at Chicago O’Hare and other airports all over the nation. They’d simply run out of patience with their employer the FAA and took matters into their own hands.

Many of the people I saw on TV were friends. Most lost their jobs later that week when they refused President Reagan’s ultimatum, “Return to work or you will be fired.” Few ever returned to air traffic control again, in fact.

There’s little point today in talking about how the strike could have or should have been handled. PATCO stuck its neck out and lost. It’s done, it’s over.

What is interesting about our nation’s air traffic control system today nearly three decades later is how little the agency that runs the system – the FAA – seems to have learned from their own mistakes of that era.

Egyptair 804 Plus Aviation’s Dumb and Dumber

May 22, 2016 by Robert Mark

Egyptair 804 Plus Aviation’s Dumb and Dumber

It’s an old ATC trick … using the word “appears” that is.

Whenever a pilot would ask us tower guys to give their landing gear the once over because of some odd cockpit indication, the airplane would make a slow pass, then wait for an opinion. Using “appears” was a clever way of telling the pilot what we could actually see without extending a guarantee the gear wouldn’t collapse on touchdown because of something we couldn’t.

I first learned about the missing Egyptair A-320 just before bedtime Wednesday night. Out of habit, I checked the local weather in that part of the Mediterranean and noticed nothing unusual before I turned out the lights.

The first reporter called me about 12:15 am wondering if I knew anything. “Sure,” I said. “Doesn’t appear to have been any significant weather along the last few hundred miles of the route.” And so it went the rest of the night every half hour or so on the phone, until one of them could get me in front of a camera for a live update. We didn’t even know about the crazy turns early Thursday morning, of course, so my only options were what appeared to be a possible mechanical failure, explosive device or a highjacking. Not rocket-science of course, but just a couple of years of experience talking early in the game. I figure better for me to give them my two cents than someone who claims it was aliens or something equally goofy.

So I’m still trying hard to figure out what, as the investigation continues building around Egyptair 804, could possibly interest our presidential candidates in commenting on the accident. But no sooner had Thursday’s morning news cycle begun when The Donald tweeted …

Donald Trump on Egyptair 804 – Jetwhine.com

Not surprisingly, he made it sound as if he had an inside track to the details, which of course he didn’t.

ATC and Pilots: When to Keep your Mouth Shut and when to Speak Up

September 28, 2015 by Robert Mark

ATC and Pilots

This sounds a bit pathetic, but most of the professional pilots I’ve known in my life have been smart alecks, me included … always ready with an opinion, whether anyone asked for it or not. We’re all control freaks to some degree I suppose, not an earth-shattering revelation of course, because those are the kind of people you want around when it’s time to grab the controls and say, “I’ve got it.”

Sometimes knowing when not to grab the microphone in the cockpit though, can be just as important, especially for me when it comes to ATC at least. I spent a decade of my aviation life in a control tower and behind a radar scope, which was just enough to qualify me – by my standards of course – as an expert.

Case in point to grabbing that microphone occurred at Madison, Wis., a few weeks ago with a student in the Cirrus. We were VFR in right traffic for Runway 31 and requesting multiple “option approaches,” the ones that leave it to us to decide whether we’ll make a full stop, stop and go, low approach, or whatever might be left. The long runway, 18-36, was closed for construction and some itinerant traffic was using Runway 3-21. BTW, tower assigned us Runway 31 which I did wonder about with traffic on Runway 3, but then since every controller runs their traffic patterns a little differently I thought no more about it.

After the third or fourth option approach, the tower cleared us to land on Runway 31, but never explained why. On touch down, I simply forgot and told the student “let’s go” and he added full power and reduced the flap setting. As soon as we broke ground the “cleared to land” part flashed in my mind. Maybe 100 feet in the air, the local controller in MSN tower firmly reminds me that when he says cleared to land, he means cleared to land. I really tried not to respond, but of course I did, “Sorry about that. My fault. But 18/36 is closed right?” as in, so what was the real problem other than my failure to follow orders. I honestly didn’t know.

Someone in the tower keyed the mic as if they were going to say something and then decided against it. We landed about 15 minutes later and the ground controller reminded me that I had earlier been cleared to land on Runway 31 and that they really need me to follow instructions in the future. Of course you know I keyed the microphone and asked again what the issue was other than blowing the order … “Did I conflict with some other aircraft?” “No, but you were cleared to land, not for an option,” he said. Since the other pilot was becoming uncomfortable with the exchange I just said, “Roger. Thanks,” and let it go. After all, I did blow it. I just would have liked to have known a bit more, but I decided to just let it go.

Jump ahead a month or so and I’m again acting as CFI in the traffic pattern at Kenosha, Wis., this time having watched the other pilot I’m flying with land out of a really nicely handled circling instrument approach. We decide to stay in the VFR traffic pattern for a bit so the controller in the tower — obviously working both tower and ground himself — taxies us to Runway 7 Left. As we taxi, I hear him chatting with a Citabria pilot he’s sending to Runway 7 Right. About now I became occupied watching my pilot prepare for another takeoff.

Some part of my brain must have heard the tower clear the Citabria for takeoff from the right runway with a left turn out, just before he cleared us from the left runway, but it remained one of those distant notes in my brain until we were about 200 feet in the air. That’s when I saw the taildragger cutting across our path from the right. I instinctively told the pilot I was flying with to head right behind the Citabria as the ENW controller mentioned him as “traffic ahead and to our right.” He was a lot more than that. If we hadn’t turned, it would have been close.

The pilot flying with me looked at me in wonderment as I just shook my head and keyed the microphone … “nice tower.” No response.

I rang the tower manager a few days later on the phone because I wanted him to know how close I thought we would have been had we not banked right after takeoff. I told him I thought the ENW tower controller just plum forgot about the taildragger off the right when he cleared us for takeoff. I got it. It happens. I just wanted to see if I’d missed something here too.

Sad to say but the tower manager at Kenosha never rang back.

This is where it becomes tough for me. Should I ring the tower manager again and risk sounding like a know-it-all? I make mistakes too. What do you think? Let me know at rob@jetwhine.com.

Note: This story ran originally at the AOPA Opinion Leaders blog.