London Air Traffic Control to move 80 miles away from Airport
When you fly into an airport, pretty much any airport in the world, you’ll see the control tower. Inside is, you guessed it, Air Traffic Control! But just outside of London’s downtown lies LCY, or London City airport. It was opened just over 30 years ago and handles about 4.5 million passengers each year, the majority looking for stress free access to London and the financial district.
The control tower at London City is reaching the end of its useful life, so a rough decision had to be made. As part of a huge renovation for the airport, they’ve decided to move all the air traffic controllers to a different location. Not in London, not even outside London, but REALLY outside of London in Swanwick.
From Aviacion del Dia
The decision to relocate the control tower to a site 80 miles (130 km) away at Swanwick, Hampshire, was not an easy one. They’re going to do it with three cable links providing live video. This will be a first in the UK giving the air traffic controllers digital access without having to actually be there.
They should be finishing this is 2018, testing it for a year, and then rolling it out in full force in 2019.
British is also rolling out biometric boarding gates in Heathrow’s airport, so it would seem that British is on the vanguard of technology with all these changes!
May 26, 2017
not a good plan if the relays go out??? all shuts down as no visual!!!!