Head Up Only – A design concept to enable multiple remote tower operations

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.