Abstract

Multiple remote tower control aims at enabling one air traffic controller (ATCO) to control simultaneous traffic at two airports at the same time. This concept has the advantage that workforce of the ATCOs can be utilized in an optimized way. Nevertheless, it raises the questions how the workplace should be designed in order to allow the ATCO to handle as much traffic as possible in a safe and efficient manner. One important parameter is the visual attention of the ATCO. Monitoring is the main task of tower ATCOs and is the mechanism by which ATCOs detect deviations between the preplanned and the real traffic situation. As a rule of thumb, air traffic controllers are trained to “look outside” as often as possible, also called working “head-up”. Especially, it is a normative behavior that the controller should monitor an aircraft during the take-off and landing phase in order to detect any hazardous events as early as possible, e.g. a burning engine. In contrast to this rule, the so-called “head-down” times of air traffic controllers increased already over the past years as new information sources were presented to the ATCOs by adding displays to their working positons. So it is of interest; whether ATCOs are able conduct their monitoring task in a multiple remote tower environment where the number of sources with visual information is further increased. Specifically, the ATCOs should be able to monitor take-off and landings as good as compared to working on a single airport.

Abstract

fter air traffic controllers and pilots had been supplied with new surveillance and planning support tools in the airport environment the last decade, airport ground handlers are still suffering out-of-date technology and thus, nowadays, frequently cause bottlenecks for efficient surface operations. The dispatcher and luggage drivers lack a full traffic pictures, have to compile needed information from difficultly accessible sources and are bound to a sequential radio communication. By that reason a human-centered concept for ground handlers was designed, implemented and tested at Hamburg Airport. Dispatcher and driver were provided with the complete traffic situation in real time, data link communication and an integrated human- machine interface (HMI) providing all needed information at one gaze and intuitive interactions to assign tasks to the driver by one click only. The concept design was much appreciated by the dispatchers.

Abstract

Providing air traffic service to more than one aerodrome is a key concept within Remote Tower. So-called Multiple Remote Tower Operations (MRTO) are expected to be more cost-efficient and user-friendly. On the one hand, their anticipated benefit is to maintain smaller airports that are currently non-profitable due to low traffic numbers, high staff- and tower maintenance costs. On the other hand, MTRO offer equally distributed and constant activity for air traffic controllers (ATCOs), with the expectation to lower risks of human error due to boredom or sleepiness at work. However, multiple tasking challenges arise if one ATCO needs to handle traffic at three airports simultaneously. Thus, combinations of visual, audio, vocal and haptic tasks need to be performed for more than just one location. Therefore, this paper addresses the impact of simultaneous movements on perceived safety, workload and task difficulty. Descriptive results show that with the increase of simultaneous movements, providing ATC is perceived as being more efficiency-critical, more demanding in workload and task difficulty increases as well. It was not tested if the differences were significant, since statistical conditions haven’t been met. Results show that no situation containing simultaneous movements was perceived as a threat to safety, good workload or the ability to provide ATC. The discussion shows why the impact of simultaneous movements might not only affect MRTO but also single remote or conventional tower environments.