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HomeMy WebLinkAboutReport - Mail Packet - 4/4/2017 - Information From Wade Troxell Re: Aviation Week & Space Technology Article From March 6-19, 2017 Edition Titled Rocky Mountain Remote: Colorado Takes Next Step In Virtual Towers50 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/MARCH 6-19, 2017 AviationWeek.com/awst John Croft Washington Rocky Mountain Remote Colorado takes next step in virtual towers Necessity will be the mother of in- vention when it comes to remote control towers for the state of Colorado, where uncontrolled airports near ski resorts are swamped with snowbird traffic in the winter but can be ghost towns in the summer. The conundrum is this: With no con- trol towers, getting tourists to those airports in a reliable fashion to fuel the tourist economy can be iffy at best in winter weather, and the asymmet- ric traffic loading throughout the year does not justify building and staffing a conventional “sticks-and-bricks” con- trol tower. Remote towers, using video and sur- veillance technologies to take the place of in situ tower controllers, working in conjunction with a remote tower cen- ter (RTC)—an offsite facility where tower controllers can operate multiple remote towers—could be the answer. Colorado will be the second state in the U.S. to install and begin evaluating the technologies, a somewhat risky endeav- or, given that the FAA does not have a remote tower program at the national level and that there has yet to be a re- mote tower certified in the country. If built as proposed, the remote tower located at the Northern Colo- rado Regional Airport (KFNL) will be the most advanced in the U.S., with day, night and all-weather video surveil- lance fused with radar position feeds from an ASR-9 radar 14 nm from the airport. The RTC, also located at the airport, would have positions for up to four controllers. Having a virtual tower at the general aviation airport, located 38 nm northwest of Denver International Airport, could also help to restart airline operations at the re- gional airport. KFNL’s single 8,500-ft.-long runway is host to 100,000 operations per year, with three flight schools and a mix of fixed-wing and helicopter traffic. The facility had commercial air service un- til 2012, when Allegiant Air ended its routes to Las Vegas and Mesa, Arizona. The carrier reportedly said that having no tower was a safety issue, particularly Pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) Camera for Approach Corridor and Surface 180º Panoramic with Static Cameras Fiber and Power Light Gun / PTZ Combo Unit 360º Panoramic with Static Cameras ATC Facility PTZ for Approach Corridor and Surface 180º Panoramic with Static Cameras location for security purposes, and be- cause of that, infrastructure supporting the tower can be costly. He notes that roads have to withstand heavy emer- gency vehicles. That is not the case for stands of cameras and other sensor equipment for a remote tower. As with the previous two phases, the Colorado Division of Aeronautics has given the FAA money to admin- ister the project—$6 million for the remote tower system. Payne does not yet know how much that money will buy, particularly since the first project should have substantial nonrecurring costs compared to future installations. Officials are now reviewing input from five bidders that answered a re- quest for proposals: Evans Consoles, Frequentis, Kongsberg Gruppen, Saab and Searidge Technologies. A winner could be selected by the end of March, leading to an “Other Transaction Agreement” with the FAA and instal- lation of the equipment within one year. A second phase, lasting two years, will include passive and active operational evaluations with FAA controllers and safety risk assessments leading to cer- tification. Once certified, the vendor will be added to a Qualified Vendor List (QVL) that the FAA says “will provide airports a source of approved vendors from which they can potentially pur- chase a more economical alternative to implementing tower services as com- pared to traditional brick-and-mortar towers.” As of yet, there are no compa- nies on the QVL, as no remote towers are certified in the U.S. The FAA’s approach of creating the QVL and supporting remote tower sys- tems evaluations is markedly different than that taken in other countries. In France, Hungary, Ireland and Sweden, the air navigation service providers are taking an active role in launching and certifying remote tower projects being built by the same companies compet- ing for the Colorado work. Sweden, the first country to certify a remote-tower- services operation, is now expanding the Saab-built system to control mul- tiple airports, an evolution that should save money on controllers. Congress, in the upcoming FAA reauthorization this fall, may attempt to jump-start the QVL process by requiring the agency to set up government-funded demonstrations at several airports, a tactic the House tried last year, but with no success. Without a national program, remote tower providers say they will have to market their systems individually to airports, increasing marketing costs. Saab and the state of Virginia are working on the only other remote tower services project underway in the U.S., at the Leesburg Executive Airport, a general aviation reliever facility near the nation’s capital. Saab, with the help of visiting FAA control- lers, continues to gain operational ex- perience in advance of safety reviews and, ultimately, certification. Payne says the Colorado system will be technically more advanced than Leesburg’s, adding surveillance from radar for airborne aircraft and seam- lessly transitioning to video-based tracking on the ground. He is a pro- ponent of distributed video systems to extend controllers’ vision beyond the traditional view from one location at the airport, an approach Searidge is taking for its remote tower project, with Hun- garoControl, at the Budapest, Hungary, airport. “Why not take this opportunity and use a little bit different setup of cameras to utilize some stitching tech- niques to improve the view?” he says. Noticeably absent from the Colorado vendor proposals was Thales, which launched a remote-tower offering in March 2016. The company, in an earlier unsolicited proposal that was turned down, suggested a remote tower and RTC similar to what the state and the FAA ultimately asked for in their re- quest for proposals. “We are committed to supporting the FAA, but unfortunately, in this instance, we could not come to an agreement,” says Tony Lo Brutto, vice president for air traffic management for Thales U.S. “Ultimately, I believe that both sides felt that we could not reach a consensus where Thales and the FAA could cost-share the neces- sary financial investment in the pro- gram. From a supplier perspective, there are a lot of costs for the pro- cess of getting to a safety case,” says Lo Brutto, of a key step in the certi- fication of the remote tower system. “That, coupled with system develop- ment, and then selling the solution to each individual airport, is a significant investment,” he adds. c AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/MARCH 6-19, 2017 51 The FAA envisions a distributed network of video cameras for the Northern Colorado Regional Airport’s new remote tower. FAA 011 with the heavy general aviation traffic. Success on the flatlands could also fare well for an expansion of remote towers into the Rocky Mountains, where at least five nontowered airports catering to winter sports could benefit. The remote tower effort is the third phase of a “blended airspace” project the state and the FAA started in 2007. Phase 1 was a contract for Saab Sensis to deploy a wide-area multilateration (WAM) surveillance system covering the Steamboat Springs, Hayden, Rifle and Craig airports in the northwestern corner of Colorado. The WAM informa- tion feeds are sent to the Denver air route traffic control center (Denver Center). The existing ground-based radars could not cover aircraft below approximately 10,000 ft. in the region, due to the mountains. In Phase 2, Colorado installed Exelis automatic dependent surveillance- broadcast (ADS-B) stations and WAM in the southwest- ern part of the state where radar cover- age would drop off at approximately 16,000 ft. The network, certi- fied by the FAA as a surveillance source in 2013, covers the Gunnison, Telluride, Montrose and Duran- go airports. The Colorado Division of Aeronautics says the upgrades “dras- tically reduced flight cancellations and increased the arrival rate during inclement weather from about four arrivals per hour to approximately 15 per hour” at the northwestern airports. The missing link is that there are no control towers at the airports The idea for a remote tower dem- onstration in Colorado first took root when the blended airspace project’s manager, William Payne, was visit- ing Denver Center and watching the multilateration feeds. “I noticed that we could see aircraft moving around on the surface at Hayden, and the con- troller jokingly said to his supervisor, ‘Can I tell this guy radar contact?’’ says Payne. “It was obvious the aircraft was back-taxiing.” Payne, who owns a Colorado-based company that has been designing tra- ditional air traffic control towers since 1991, has been the project manager of all three phases and a staunch advocate of remote towers in the U.S. “Airports need to make the decision [whether] they are going to fund a tower,” says Payne. “And if they do, they find that the operations and maintenance on a sticks-and-bricks tower becomes very onerous.” His cost studies from 2012 showed that a traditional federal contract tower was about $4 million to install—to cover design, construction, equipment and site preparation—and the average for having five contract controllers on staff was approximately $550,000 per year. Site costs are not insignificant. Payne points out that a traditional control tow- er has to be put in a relatively remote AIR TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT A new remote tower system in Colorado will feature visual views from cameras and radar position data from a nearby sur- veillance radar. SAAB DIGITAL AIR TRAFFIC SOLUTIONS 010 March 30, 2017 TO: City Councilmembers FROM: Mayor Troxell RE: Discussed at Regional Airport Commission on 3/23/17 /sek