New digital tower in Kingston

[stef]

Navcanada moving towards more centralization through technology.

https://www.kingstonist.com/news/digita ... on-safety/

[BrianLarson]

Navcanada moving towards more centralization through technology.

https://www.kingstonist.com/news/digita ... on-safety/

Well done, I think this will improve the safety of civil aviation.

[Dry Guy]

The internet isn't all that reliable though. So there will be some blackouts from time to time.

[philaviate]

Navcanada moving towards more centralization through technology.

https://www.kingstonist.com/news/digita ... on-safety/

Well done, I think this will improve the safety of civil aviation.

How?
It is cost cutting. That's all.


Why not add that technology AND keep physical tower controllers.Because it's about cost cutting.

All the technology in the world can't beat boots on the ground for some situations.

[bobcaygeon]

Will they still be short controllers and closing towers at night? Most likely yes as the budget will be reduced. YWG and YLW aren't exactly in the back 40 like some of the FSS's are. Why are they short staffed? Late October isn't exactly prime vacation time like the summer and Christmas.

[flieslikeachicken]

The internet isn't all that reliable though. So there will be some blackouts from time to time.

NavCanada already uses remote radio transceivers and has been doing so for decades.

Internet outage mitigation can be done using multiple sources of internet. Companies have mitigation strategies that usually consist of at least two internet providers, one being the primary and one the backup using a different line/source. For example, they can use Bell Fibre to the premise and then have Rogers fibre to the premise as well. This would be two separate lines routing through two separate facilities that connect to the wider internet.

At the end of the day, if they were to lose access, the airport would be treated like any other that has an air traffic control outage... it becomes an MF.

[BrianLarson]

I think both options are necessary for reliability, to avoid any possible interruptions.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I am all for leveraging technology to get more for less. If remoting means more airports can get control towers then I am all for it. If remoting is just done to save money than then my enthusiasm is greatly reduced. Sadly I think this is just another step toward reducing services to anywhere that is not served by mainline airlines.

[goingnowherefast]

I am all for leveraging technology to get more for less. If remoting means more airports can get control towers then I am all for it. If remoting is just done to save money than then my enthusiasm is greatly reduced. Sadly I think this is just another step toward reducing services to anywhere that is not served by mainline airlines.

I hope your right. Lots of remote places need control towers, but some fancy study determined "it's not necessary", aka too expensive, but justied by bureaucratic BS. Expand services at the same cost? Great. Reduce services at an even lower cost? Not happy about that. ATC is a safety service, NavCanada better provide it.

[digits_]

I am all for leveraging technology to get more for less. If remoting means more airports can get control towers then I am all for it. If remoting is just done to save money than then my enthusiasm is greatly reduced.

Aren't both those things the same?
More airports can get control towers with the remote system exactly *because* it is cheaper and saves money over a local human occupied tower?

[goingnowherefast]

As long as they don't replace human towers with remote towers.

[digits_]

As long as they don't replace human towers with remote towers.

Depends. Towers disappear. If the choice is to either lose the tower or get a remote tower, wouldn't it be a good thing?

[goingnowherefast]

I'd be very skeptical, there's not a lot of trust in the NavCanada bureaucracy.
Remote towers should be used to increase and improve service. Closing or downgrading the air traffic service isn't what anyone wants.

[aspiringCPL]

As long as they don't replace human towers with remote towers.

NavCanada advised all employees today that Hamilton is going to be the first remote tower, scheduled to open in 2028. No other towers will be announced until Hamilton-remote is fully operational and tested.

My thoughts go out to those controllers and their families in YHM who got the bad news today and now have to make some hard decisions about their futures.

[RoAF-Mig21]

I see this as good news, especially if it's any precursor to commercial air service returning to YGK. I miss Jazz going there, but at this point, I'll welcome anyone, be it Jazz, Porter or someone else.

[goingnowherefast]

As long as they don't replace human towers with remote towers.

NavCanada advised all employees today that Hamilton is going to be the first remote tower, scheduled to open in 2028. No other towers will be announced until Hamilton-remote is fully operational and tested.

My thoughts go out to those controllers and their families in YHM who got the bad news today and now have to make some hard decisions about their futures.

This is exactly what I was afraid of seeing.

The first remote tower should be at somewhere with an overwhelmed MF AAS (___ radio).

[aspiringCPL]

Peterborough (CYPQ) will be transitioning to an FSS soon.

https://www.navcanada.ca/en/air-traffic ... rough.aspx
https://www.ptbocanada.com/journal/pete ... ffic-plans

It would have been a great test location as the first remote facility... no need to move personnel, and it can be purpose-built from the ground up as a remove facility instead of needing to see if an existing facility can be done remotely.

It'll be interesting if Nav chooses to completely move all the Hamilton controllers to Kingston and at the same time build and staff Peterborough with on-site FSS's.

[Daniel Cooper]

It's a stepping stone to ATC being completely replaced by computers.

[Cessna 180]

How much cheaper can it possibly be to build some big facility in Kingston and move tower controllers from across the country and install all this new equipment, then to continue to operate the towers that are already there? This is assuming that these controllers even want to move to Kingston.

It doesn't look like these controllers will be operating more than one site at a time (like remote FSS), so I fail to see the employee cost savings.

I can totally understand this for new sites. There's plenty of airports in Canada that deserve a tower, and this could be a great way to improve service without the expense of opening a whole new building, but I can't see how it makes any sense to shut down a facility that's operational.

[Dry Guy]

The US has laid off 10% of its entire workforce so far this year. I don't think people fully realize what's coming. In a short while any job that can be done by advanced software (AI) will no longer exist. A tiny fraction of the workforce will remain to monitor this software's performance. This isn't a distant future thing, we are months away.

[digits_]

The US has laid off 10% of its entire workforce so far this year. I don't think people fully realize what's coming. In a short while any job that can be done by advanced software (AI) will no longer exist. A tiny fraction of the workforce will remain to monitor this software's performance. This isn't a distant future thing, we are months away.

Good thing there's almost no job that can be fully replaced by AI.

Working remotely is completely different than using AI.

AI is not magic. It can't think. It's not going to get significantly better than what we have now.

The technology to replace controllers, if so desired, already exists. And I'm sure it would work great in 99.9% of the day. Good thing nobody wants to take the heat for that 0.01% of cases in which it will fail horribly.

AI will NOT make this better.

AI can also be the scapegoat for companies to lay people off so they don't have to admit it's because of other reasons.

[Daniel Cooper]

The US has laid off 10% of its entire workforce so far this year. I don't think people fully realize what's coming. In a short while any job that can be done by advanced software (AI) will no longer exist. A tiny fraction of the workforce will remain to monitor this software's performance. This isn't a distant future thing, we are months away.

It will be worse in Canada than in the States. Trump will not renew CUSMA as he'll want all those manufacturing jobs for the US. So we're going to lose desk jobs to AI and manufacturing jobs to Americans.