Project Profiles

It is widely believed that passenger and cargo traffic will double or even triple over the next 20 years, and airports must accommodate this significant increase in traffic. The objective of Staffed Virtual Towers (SVT) Program is to provide airports a cost and operationally efficient way to direct the increased demand, while maintaining the highest possible safety standards. Staffed Virtual Tower technology and application experiments are currently occurring at the NextGen CNS Test Bed to explore how best to control airports from remote locations rather than from the traditional, expensive air traffic control tower.

Using video cameras and advanced surveillance and weather sensors, controllers will receive visibility and traffic situational awareness of the surface of an airport and the airspace around the airport - regardless of weather or lighting conditions - while being physically located remotely from the airport. Through these virtualized air traffic control towers, controllers will be able to perform all of their normal duties including monitoring the airport surface, guiding arriving and departing flights, alerting aircraft of obstructions on the runway, sequencing arriving aircraft and providing clearance for aircraft to take off and land through a remote centralized or regional location at a fraction of the cost of today's tower methods.