It's Official: Fort McMurray will be getting a control tower

[thatdaveguy]

Internal news today. Not sure when the public announcement will be.

[CYQMer]

Word from Ottawa is that this will be Canada's first Virtual Control Tower.
Camera's will be setup and all control will be carried out remotely via cameras and radar feeds.

Let's see how well this one works out shall we.

[Guido]

Word from Ottawa is that this will be Canada's first Virtual Control Tower.
Camera's will be setup and all control will be carried out remotely via cameras and radar feeds.

Let's see how well this one works out shall we.

It'll work great right up until some jackass cuts the fibre optic cable up to the "tower" on an solid IFR day with five aircraft on the approach!

[kevenv]

I guess the days of telling your trainee to "Get your head out the window where it belongs" are gone. I can't believe we are going down this road. They are going to have to write a whole new chapter to MANOPS. Chapter 3A - "Almost VFR But Not Quite IFR Control"

What a bunch of morons.

[NJ]

So who would have virtual ATC licenses?

[co-joe]

Ft Mac needs a tower badly!

[kevenv]

Ft Mac needs a tower badly!

Nobody is disputing that. The company doesn't want to open a real tower there because it would cost them too much money and they probably would have difficulty finding people to go there what with the cost of living etc. It'll be interesting to see where they come up with the "virtual controllers".

[kevenv]

So who would have virtual ATC licenses?

Some 14 yr old in Moosonee with VATSIM?

[NJ]

It'll be handled by a former Dell Call Centre in Bombay.

Couple questions:

Are they going to outfit all the local wildlife with transponders so we know when they run onto the runway?

How much are they going to pay the CWO that'll do the weather instead of FSS? They might have to pay them more than the specialists currently working the tower.

Can a virtual controller go virtually 8 hours from bottle to mike?

[wannabepilot]

I didn't want to post anything until Nav Canada made it all official, but since the press conference is going to be tomorrow, I thought I would kill the virtual tower rumor before it has a chance to gain traction. Virtual tower technology has been deemed to be not ready for practical application yet, and the general consensus from people I've talked to is that it would be applied at a location where a control tower is already in place; it's too much of a leap to go from a flight service station to a virtual tower without the transitional step of a manned tower in between. It will be a manned tower, operating limited hours 3 days a week initially, and eventually increasing to 14 hour a day, 7 days a week operations once it is fully staffed.

[NJ]

That's good (as long as I don't have to move to YMM). ATC-1?

[wannabepilot]

Not sure what grade of tower it will be, as I don't know how they are classified (I'm not on the ATC side of things). CYMM did about 69,000 movements last year, I believe split at about 2/3 VFR 1/3 IFR. Busiest days were around 450 movements, busiest month around 8100 movements. What would that work out to for a tower grade?

[thatdaveguy]

That's AI 1 wannabepilot

This will NOT be a virtual tower. The information in this thread is wrong. There was a great deal of speculation that it would be, but it's officially NOT GOING TO BE. Not now at least.

However, work is still being done towards the RACS project, so we will see it in the future. but not now.

[NJ]

yeah, probably grade 1 due to the layout

[wannabepilot]

Just a note on layout. Clearing has begun for a parallel runway to be completed in 2009. How does that affect the complexity as it relates to what grade of tower it is? Also, anyone know what grade Whitehorse is (slowest tower at 30-ish thousand movements) and what grade CYZF and CYYT are? (at 70 000 or so movements, similar to CYMM)

[FamilyGuy]

I'll wait for the "official announcement" but HONESTLY...

A "virtual control tower"????

Who thinks this fucking shit up. IF that was even considered..................

Sounds like someone has too many toys to play with and a hate on for humans to me.

Maybe just let the kitten play up there - works soooo well everywhere else

[kevenv]

Who thinks this fucking @#$! up. IF that was even considered..................

Rest assured it was considered last fall. The company approached the union and said that they wanted to discuss the possibility. I never heard the outcome, though prior to the meeting it was my impression that the union was less than thrilled with the idea.

[seahawk]

Whatever they're building will be better than the current situation

[NJ]

Just a note on layout. Clearing has begun for a parallel runway to be completed in 2009. How does that affect the complexity as it relates to what grade of tower it is? Also, anyone know what grade Whitehorse is (slowest tower at 30-ish thousand movements) and what grade CYZF and CYYT are? (at 70 000 or so movements, similar to CYMM)

YXY is a 1, YZF is a 2, YYT is I think a 1. Movements don't always tell the whole story. Langley does 80000-100000 movements and is a 1. YQM is a 1 and it's very busy (will probably be reclassified sometime). YZF's 70000 movements are done without much of a taxiway infrastructure (5700 foot backtrack to the main runway). It's easy when it's all departures in certain runway configs. It's easy when it's all arrivals in certain runway configs. But even a moderate mix or arrivals and departures or a bad runway coniguration due to wind (ie 330 at 20) and the poopoo hits the limited infrastructure fan.

A Parallel runway would add to the complexity by adding runway crossings, but it will add capacity. YMM seems pretty good about building associated taxiway infrastructure.

[JigglyBus]

It's a strange process picking a tower grade. Pitt Meadows is 108,000 and a Grade 1, Regina is 63,000 and Grade 2.

I suspect they will twist the numbers around to make FMac a grade 2 in a vein attempt to attract people to go there.

I wouldn't go there for all the tea in China.

Well maybe ALL the tea.... but not the amount of tea that NC will offer.

[DA900]

YXY is a 1, YZF is a 2, YYT is I think a 1. Movements don't always tell the whole story. Langley does 80000-100000 movements and is a 1. YQM is a 1 and it's very busy (will probably be reclassified sometime). YZF's 70000 movements are done without much of a taxiway infrastructure (5700 foot backtrack to the main runway). It's easy when it's all departures in certain runway configs. It's easy when it's all arrivals in certain runway configs.

With respect to that. Does anyone know if they ever plan to build the taxiway for 33? It looks as they had started 2 years ago then nothing. Heard rumors of the terminal being moved to the other side of the field. I thought maybe that's why they stopped it, but since they just finished expansion on the terminal, and the location is as good as it gets I don't see them moving it, but then who knows....

[NJ]

Next up is taxiway Mike which will be off the south side of the Threshold 09. From there there will be a couple branch taxiways (shaped like football field goal posts) to accomidate new hangars. If you look around the GNWT Transport website you'll find a copy of the YZF master plan. That shows where the new terminal and taxiways will be (eventually). New terminal will be midway down the west side of 15/33, with taxiway along the full west side of the runway.

That grading that took place a couple years ago was for new drainage fields only.

[DA900]

Thank's NJ

[. ._]

So who would have virtual ATC licenses?

Some 14 yr old in Moosonee with VATSIM?

I spit coffee on my keyboard. Thanks.

[scrambled_legs]

Wow... I guess someone must have brought sniffing salts into the boardroom. I thought the virtual tower was a done deal. Good to see that things have turned around.