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Jersey Airport says it hopes its new digital tower, which allows air traffic to be controlled and monitored from a remote facility, will help to bring in more business.
Having taken what it describes as a "major technological step forward," Ports of Jersey is aiming to use the technology as a business development opportunity as the first ‘certified’ remote digital tower in the British Isles, next month.
Digital ‘remote’ towers theoretically allow the air traffic control service for the runway and immediate vicinity to be provided from any location, to any location, providing a back-up if the main ATC tower had to be evacuated
Pictured: Ports want to become the first ‘certified’ remote digital tower in the British Isles.
They also have the potential to offer a number of benefits to the controller, such as superimposing aircraft labels with callsign information onto the live picture or using infrared to improve visibility of aircraft in bad weather.
Jersey Airport already uses one of those enhancements: two pan-tilt zoom cameras, one facing north and the other south, provide a ‘smart binocular’ function that will also be available to controllers in the conventional tower.
Images of the airfield and its surroundings are delivered to the remote tower from 11 HD cameras. These images are “stitched” together and the resulting panoramic picture is displayed on three large screens. The remainder of the equipment is identical to the existing systems used in the conventional tower.
Supplied by Frequentis, a leading ATC equipment supplier based in Austria, the remote tower facility is based in a building on the edge of the airfield and has many resilient and diverse data and power supplies.
In a statement, Ports officials said: "The digital tower in Jersey is a major technological step forward for aviation and Ports of Jersey, aiming to use the technology as a business development opportunity by offering similar facilities to other UK airports."
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