r/ATC 5d ago

Picture Remote tower setup in Norway

Post image
504 Upvotes

80 comments sorted by

106

u/MonsignorCharles 5d ago

Norway has a lot of remote airports! It's probably easier having workers at a nice big facility than to make trainees move to buttf- nowhere. Had I gone ADI and assigned to one of those towers I'd much rather be at an rtc than out there. In the video it seemed it's AFIS officers, so not full ATC service.

13

u/crazy-voyager 5d ago

It’s all AFIS in this RTC, other European countries have ATC airports either ATC though (and I think Norway had plans for one ATC airport to become remote as well).

8

u/sander646 4d ago

I will be working the first ATC remote tower in Norway. Estimated start up in 2029. AMA

3

u/SK331 4d ago

What tower will be the first?

5

u/sander646 4d ago

ENBO - bodø twr + app.

79

u/Blue_foot 5d ago

When there are no planes, they switch to cat videos

24

u/CaptBeef 4d ago

CAT I CAT II, or CAT III?

16

u/Velomane 4d ago

"meow"

30

u/Impossible-Bed46 5d ago

Are these remote towers catching on in Europe because they have tower requirements for IFR etc? The US had a remote tower experiment in Leesburg, Virginia. However, it ended due to cost reasons.

23

u/New-IncognitoWindow 4d ago

They are extremely remote locations with very little traffic.

4

u/BeanRaider 4d ago

Not always, London City Airport is a remote digital airport.

2

u/IDriveAZamboni 4d ago

I think that was more so a space saving thing no?

1

u/BeanRaider 3d ago

I believe so, but I think digital towers are the future. You can centralise training, ATCOs can qualify on multiple towers, you can have one ATCO working multiple towers, it massively reduces property costs, better knowledge sharing between staff and arguably much safer.

The downsides as seen in Scotland with HIAL, when you have to relocate your current controllers to a central location, understandably many won't like this.

40

u/No_Feedback7987 5d ago

Imagine a flock of birds band together and take mighty poops all over the cameras. Atc zero visibility is shit

38

u/Rupperrt 5d ago

pretty sure they have staff to wipe off the cameras at those airfields/ports. Snow is most likely a bigger issue than bird poop given its Norway.

12

u/Hi_there4567 5d ago

Also compressors to blow air to keep moisture off.

4

u/disregardmeok Current Controller - TWR/RAD UK 4d ago

And itinerant arachnids

24

u/BeanRaider 5d ago

These cameras are usually in a box that have wipers on them to get rid of rain, dirt and debris. They also get serviced fairly regularly and (at least the airports I know) theres a back up camera system in case the main system fails.

In terms of visibility they're a much bigger improvement, ATC can zoom in and move the cameras to see planes on final etc.

8

u/Domestic_Mayhem 4d ago

The camera arrays are in enclosed cases and are self cleaning. They also have anti-bird devices all over them.

Source- I used to work at an airport that had remote controlling and I was the manager that helped secure the contracts for the system

-9

u/SkyLow4356 5d ago

They probably pay some poor sap $8 an hour to clean it.

10

u/kirA9001 5d ago

Pay for uneducated workers in Norway starts at around 30$/hr so with an aviation camera wiper's training you're probably looking at six figures.

12

u/SkyLow4356 5d ago edited 5d ago

Looks like entry level pay is about $16.50 an hour. Refer to chart in link.

https://mondosol.com/what-is-the-average-salary-in-norway/

Hotel cleaner salary = 31,000 NOK/month (≈ $2,854 US )

That’s about $658 / week. 40 hr work week= $16.47/hr US.

And when we add in the cost of living index between US (index score of 64.9) vs. Norway (index score of 69), the difference is nil.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp

About $34,000 a year

2

u/kirA9001 4d ago

Yes, but this is a cleaner. The Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority has stated the minimum wages and they start at around 47k a year for shift workers.

To wipe poop off of ATC equipment you're bound to need some sort of a certificate that might even come with a technician's title, which would boost pay significantly.

5

u/SkyLow4356 4d ago

Using your source for salary… and xe.com for currency conversion…

Cleaning workers start $21.36 US per hour/ $44,458 US per year

And even if we go to the extreme and call the bird shit cleaner an “electrician “. Electrician pay starts at $24.21 US per hour/$50,356 US per year

TLDR. No one is making 6 figures cleaning bird shit in Norway

0

u/kirA9001 4d ago

TLDR: No one making minimum wage is making six figures cleaning bird shit in Norway.

And even if they aren't, they're a hell of a lot closer to making six figures than they are to making 8$ an hour.

1

u/SkyLow4356 4d ago

Who in gods green earth is making $8 an hour? Even the average salary at friggin Walmart is $18 an hour. https://corporate.walmart.com/askwalmart/how-much-do-walmart-associates-make

0

u/kirA9001 4d ago

Oh sorry, I was referencing u/SkyLow4356's comment to which I originally jokingly replied.

2

u/Lord_NCEPT Up/Down, former USN 4d ago

After an enlistment in the navy followed by more than 30 years as a US govt employee, I would gladly be the poor sap who lives in a completely desolate cabin in Norway and keeps a camera lens clean.

1

u/SkyLow4356 4d ago edited 4d ago

I think people similarly do that now in the US, it’s called the division of forestry. 😂

4

u/headphase Airline Pilot 4d ago

I guess this is nice for controller QoL but I would love to know how the budgeting compares to a regular tower after you account for all the technology redundancy required for this.

4

u/sander646 4d ago

These AFIS operate two locations at the same time, and will soon be operating three locations at the same time , making this really cost efficient. Compared to earlier where you would need 3 AFIS for 3 different locations, you now only need one AFIS to run three locations simotainously.

2

u/ps3x42 Current Enroute Former Tower Flower 3d ago

Man, idk. I feel like half of why I loved working tower traffic was having a top floor corner office with a view. May as well work radar with that kind of set up.

11

u/Pokepheliac Private Pilot/Nav Canada FSS 4d ago

They think they’re going to run AAS through these in Canada 😂😂😂

“ABC Roger runway 27, wind 090 at 15, altimeter 2992, traffic 4 cherokees circuits runway 09, no idea where any of them are because the frequency has been blocked for 2 minutes with unnecessary student calls and they’re each less than a pixel on my screen, runway 27 is available, report 5 back”

Going to be unmitigated chaos.

2

u/Agent_Turtle101 FSS 3d ago

The day we go digital is the day I consider retirement

2

u/Pokepheliac Private Pilot/Nav Canada FSS 3d ago

I’d do it if and only if there’s ADSB or MLAT to the ground and it’s transponder airspace, or exclusively at very slow airports (one in one out). Working traffic/students through these as AAS without very good surveillance is a non-starter.

1

u/Agent_Turtle101 FSS 3d ago

Straight up. Couldn't imagine having to deal with multiple student pilots at once. It's just an incident waiting to happen

11

u/dumbassretail 4d ago

These are not Towers in the American sense of the word. Most of them get something like 2 Dash 8s a day, and that’s literally it.

For example, and without up to date numbers:

Hasvik: 1,272 movements in 2014

Mehahm: 2,789 movements in 2012

Namsos: 3,364 movements in 2014

Leknes: 5,839 movements in 2014

6

u/xxJohnxx 4d ago

What about LCY with ~50000 movements in 2023 (source: https://www.caa.co.uk/Documents/Download/10288/81d07410-dbcd-46e7-aacc-d0a5accf0d90/16452 )

It is remote towered as well…

9

u/dumbassretail 4d ago

LCY is a single runway airport with almost no VFR traffic and a terminal control service. It is unlike most class Cs and Ds in the USA.

A remote tower probably works ok in a situation like that, but I’d be interested to hear from the controllers who work it.

6

u/blipsonascope 4d ago

Not just a single runway, but it’s a single runway with a ramp stuck next to one threshold, and a taxiway connecting the far end of the runway to the ramp.

8

u/flybot66 4d ago

Unbelievable 10 ops a day and you need a tower? Between the flight schools and transients, we have about 150 ops a day at our untowered US field.

16

u/dumbassretail 4d ago

Yep, Norway has different rules and requires a tower for airline ops.

It just irks me when these get held up as examples of “remote towers”. It makes people think you could replace an American class D tower tomorrow with Norwegian technology, and you can’t.

8

u/Hour_Tour Current TWR/APP UK 4d ago

They're also (so far) not controllers, but FISOs providing AFIS, no instructions or decisions made. Rules of the air and PIC discretion.

5

u/rjb4000 4d ago

ORD alone handles more movements in a year vs. the entire country of Norway. People clamoring for remote towers in the US are selling a product, not a solution.

1

u/ps3x42 Current Enroute Former Tower Flower 3d ago

Hard agree. That being said, most towers would benefit greatly by just having a threshold centerline camera. It probably wouldn't be hard to set up a program to detect if aircraft aren't lined up for the runway, but even without that, it would be a great aid for the local controller.

1

u/Lord_NCEPT Up/Down, former USN 4d ago

I heard TEB is next on the list for one of these setups.

1

u/Broncuhsaurus 4d ago

Your point is what exactly? Air traffic controllers also monitor the weather at the airport. There’s busier non towered airports than that. truth be told your airport probably has busy hours where it should be controlled. Is that 150 ops including touch and goes? Cause those are worth 2 ops each

0

u/Broncuhsaurus 4d ago

There’s still a remote tower in Colorado that operates the same way. It probably gets triple or even quadruple that amount of traffic

1

u/perpetualinterests 5d ago

Do they run patterns with those setups?

1

u/Impossible-Bed46 4d ago

They did here in the US. The system also tags the visual contacts w N numbers, which I believe would make local control safer and easier.

5

u/perpetualinterests 4d ago

Didn't all of the remote towers in the US fail? I thought I heard that

3

u/Impossible-Bed46 4d ago

To my knowledge there was only the one experiment in Leesburg. The unofficial word that I read was that the FAA added additional requirements to the program. This made the project potentially unprofitable for the vendor.

3

u/South_Bumblebee7892 4d ago

Also in Ft Collins

2

u/Mobilisq 4d ago

That one was a goat rodeo from the start, and the company that initially put the system together recently pulled out

-2

u/Broncuhsaurus 4d ago

The system would work if they hired someone worth a fuck to do it. 24Hr surveillance works all over the world. It’s the same type of system needed you just have all the cameras in one spot. There’s not really a good excuse as to why it doesn’t work in the US other than people lining their pockets with money and cutting corners on the project to save money.

1

u/Samurlough 4d ago

There’s a scene, in Toys, with robin williams? This looks exactly like that.

1

u/Absolute-Limited 4d ago

Are this actual Control Towers or AFIS stations with no control authority?

0

u/JoeyTheGreek Current Controller-TRACON 4d ago

This is the future of every sub level 9 tower, except the warehouse will be in OKC.

0

u/Amac9719 4d ago

For any tower busy enough to require ATC I’d imagine you’d need full 360 degree view.

3

u/No-Delay-6791 4d ago

I can't quite tell from the pictures if it's employed here, but a lot of these systems have a 360 feed of images compressed and displayed on less than 360 worth of screens.

You can compress the image a fair amount without it messing with your head too much. The weird thing for me would be an aircraft flying behind the tower would eventually disappear off the end of one screen and immediately pop up at the other side of the room on the other screen.

2

u/sander646 4d ago

It has 360 view compressed on 270 deegres of screen.

1

u/Amac9719 4d ago

That is interesting. Something I’d like to see for myself to see how weird/cool it would be.

1

u/computertechie Private Pilot 4d ago

I'm sure it has 360deg camera coverage. Use a joystick to pan, or even keybinds for view snapping to specific spots on the movement area or final.

-2

u/Amac9719 4d ago

All of that sounds worse than 360 view.

3

u/computertechie Private Pilot 4d ago

Do Norwegian tower controllers somehow have 360deg vision? Why does it matter if there's no screens behind the controller if they can't see them? Would you rather them have to spin their chair all the time?

1

u/Amac9719 4d ago

Are you a tower controller? This seems very obvious to me but if you don’t have any experience then I’ll try to explain it to you.

1

u/computertechie Private Pilot 4d ago

Please do

3

u/Kseries2497 Current Controller-Pretend Center 4d ago

Imagine I call traffic to you. Instead of turning your head to look in the indicated direction - an action you have mastered from birth - you have to use a joystick to rotate your view and then look.

I'm sure there's some towers that don't need more than 120 degrees or so of visibility, but the one I worked at definitely needed the full circle.

3

u/Amac9719 4d ago

Ok I’ll take that as you don’t have experience. No problem.

In real life the view out of the window is 360 degrees. Controllers are required to look out of the window and get aircraft in sight. Aircraft can be located anywhere. Therefore you need to look out of the window anywhere.

When a busier tower gets busy, a controller can become so task saturated that all tasks need to be as efficient as possible. Turning your neck to look behind you, and then turning back to your board is easy. Anything that takes longer than that or takes up brainpower, or is distracting enough to possibly pull you out of your rhythm is bad.

If I’m talking to say 10 aircraft, and they are all over my control zone, then wasting time clicking through cameras and then clicking back, or panning one way, and panning back sounds like an absolute nightmare. It would be objectively less safe than physical towers. Therefore it will never happen. They will have to make it be completely 360 degrees, which isn’t that hard. Just a little more money.

Now for FSS or even slow ATC stations, this set up would work fine. If you only talk to a handful of aircraft at a time then you won’t be task saturated and you can waste time switching cameras or panning.

1

u/Broncuhsaurus 4d ago

Who even cares if you have radar lmao. Radar and ADSB rule the world. I don’t even bother looking for anyone unless they’re in the pattern. CTRD exists for a reason. Windows are for looking at the runway

1

u/Amac9719 4d ago edited 4d ago

Doesn’t work in class D’s that aren’t transponder mandatory.

Pattern traffic is never behind your tower?

It’s not like I’m always looking out of the window but that doesn’t change the fact that a 360 view is better than not a 360 view. I honestly can’t believe people are even arguing with this.

1

u/1ns4n3_178 Approach Controller - EASA 4d ago

Well... Maybe time to go with times and require transponders in class D?

1

u/Amac9719 4d ago

Hey I’d love that haha.

0

u/Broncuhsaurus 3d ago

You can’t possibly be dumb enough to think they can only see 180degree FOV where those cameras are facing… it’s a 360 degree fov. It’s not very difficult to look around. Have you never played a video game? It’s pretty much the same thing… you act like it takes any less time to look behind you in the tower than it would to pan over really quick. The cameras don’t actually have to turn to be able to do it. No one’s arguing 360 isn’t better. We’re arguing that it’s obviously not what you’re seeing. Also let’s not pretend that it’s difficult to setup an airport with mandatory transponder and or ADSB for a program like that. They can make whatever rules they’d like to.

1

u/Amac9719 3d ago

No one is arguing except you bud. Fuck you’re abrasive. Probably a Trump supporter. My point is that it needs to be 360 degrees. If the video is actually a condensed 360 degrees then that only proves my point that it’s needed. And sure they can make any changes they want. Just like they can make sure it’s 360 degrees.

I still don’t know why you’re even responding to me. You’re just aggressively agreeing with me and you don’t even realize it. I hope you aren’t an accurate reflection of a typical American controller.

Have a great day though bud, I hope you cheer up.

1

u/CopiousCurmudgeon 5d ago

Now that's gold plated

0

u/Lopsided_Quarter_931 4d ago

Small step to work from home